Ankh Morpork Malady: Or, Where Alchemists Go Wrong
by Gogol
Summary: Madam comes to Ankh-Morpork! Vimes' desk explodes! Angua blacks out! Sybil darns Vimes' socks! COULD THERE BE A CONNECTION? Venture on, dear reader, to find out. **COMPLETE!**
1. Chapter One

**Chapter One**

_In which we observe the exploits of Ankh-Morpork's Finest and have an unrivaled opportunity to partake of alchemical tea and biscuits_

The Commander was Not Having A Good Day.

It was one of those lovely, quintessentially Morporkian days, in which the fumes coming off the 'surface' of the Ankh were strong enough to kill**(a)** a man with a weak constitution and the temperature of the stuff was easily high enough to cremate the body. The last time they'd had a summer day that hot, a horse had exploded, which had admittedly been entertaining.

This, on the other hand, was not entertaining. At all.

Throughout the Watch house, full-grown, armed and armored men, women, dwarves, trolls, zombies, golems, gargoyles, gnomes, werewolves, vampires, and Nobbses ran for cover. Or at least sidled towards it in a suspiciously nonchalant fashion.

In Vimes' office, the imp known to all as Gooseberry repeated his message.

"He wants me to_what?_"

"Why, attend Lady Selachii's annual Hogswatch Ball, Insert Name Here! In," the innocent yet ill-fated imp added, consulting the message it had apparently, in a fit of absent mindedness, written on its wrist, "full dress uniform!"

Vimes glared in silence, because a few streets away from Pseudopolis Yard, East Avenue, marked the beginning of the area where Nice People still dare to live, and when he yelled a representative tended to come over and complain**(b)**. At length.

Across from him, unnoticed by all, a doorknob twisted and turned vaguely, embarrassed by the Look.

Becoming aware that, though his doorknob might have been cringing, the imp was merely giving him a blank look, he lit a cigar and said,

"Does Sybil know about this?"

"Ah, you will be pleased, I know, to hear that the Duchess has already received a message and thoroughly approves! In fact she apparently added, upon hearing, that she was looking forward to the opportunity to do some advertising for the Sunshine Sanctuary and that this was the perfect chance!"

Vimes covered his face with his hands, splaying his fingers slightly so that he could still stare through them at the manically bright, disquieting blue face before him, in much the same manner that a sentenced man had regarded his executioner, once upon a time not so very long ago, who asked him to sign the rope.

"Bloody buggering hell," he muttered, in a remarkable show of restraint. Sitting up slightly and facing the imp, he was struck by a sudden, hopeful thought. "Did he say _why _he wanted me to go? I mean, he's never previously required -"

"Why, yes!" said the imp. The second exclamation point was on its way, judging from the slight strain in its squeaky voice, and, yes, here it came- "His Lordship said he thought your presence would be of immense assistance in delicate diplomatic discussions with the Ambassador from Pseudopolis!!"

"Damn." There was no hope. Vetinari had even brought Sybil in it, a move that surely counted as cheating under any set of rules. He wrote a note to himself to check up on the situation with Pseudopolis - Ankh-Morpork relations and then promptly subsided into a healthy session of subdued yet stress-relieving ranting. Gooseberry retreated to its box. Below, the rest of the Watch began once more to creep from their respective hiding places, dust themselves off, look sheepish, generally avoid eyes, and, eventually, resume their normal duties, content in the knowledge that the bomb had been safely defused. All appeared to be well, or at least acceptably lacking resemblance to a pear.

It was, therefore, somewhat surprising to all concerned when the Commander's office exploded with a loud bang.

Well, all right, not the entire office. To the watchmen below, however, it certainly seemed that way. What actually happened was that the door was blown off its hinges by a rapidly expanding fireball, which then left an aesthetically pleasing scorch mark on the opposite wall before evaporating into nothingness**(c)**.

In the ensuing loud silence, Captain Carrot was the first to react, barreling up the stairs and almost knocking himself unconscious on the doorframe in his enthusiasm to discover the origins of the mysterious eruption.

To his mild surprise, the source of the latter was _not _the Commander, but was in fact, as far as he could tell, the Commander's desk, which was lying in several interestingly-shaped pieces and scattered rather widely about the room, along with a veritable snowbank of paperwork and, for some reason, the crispy remains of what appeared to be a rare sub-species of Astoria Fly Trap.

His superior officer was in fact hanging from the windowsill by his fingertips. After carefully reviewing various aspects of the situation and listening for a few seconds to the steady stream of expletives coming through the open window, he decided that Mister Vimes probably wasn't there by choice and obligingly pulled the man back in.

"Right," said Vimes briskly, once safely back on solid ground, "Now, what the hell just happened? ANGUA!"

"Yessir?" said Angua, who had not, of course, followed Carrot up but remained outside to eavesdrop in any way whatsoever. She peered at the wreckage within.

Vimes made the universal gesture of _Well?_

She nodded, once, and stepped inside the office proper. She took a deep breath, and smelled...

Oiliness, a sickly stench that streaked across the room towards the door. It wasn't pungent, but there was a pervasiveness to it that made her stumble backwards.

"What's wrong?" said Vimes, clearly alarmed. "Sergeant, perhaps you should step outside -"

Then he stopped, because at this point Angua, who had begun to sway, collapsed.

**(a) As opposed to, say, merely inspiring mild hallucinations involving purple giraffes and oddly fluorescent mushrooms. You know the ones.**

**(b) They tended to be so incoherent that it was a waste of time listening to them, and to the day he died Vimes never found out which upset them more, the fact that they could hearhis voice - or the fact that they could hear the individual words.**

**(c) Though Visit pointed out that if it were a sign that a demon occupied the Watch house, the fact they could not see it meant nothing, and incidentally was anyone interested in this exorcism pamphlet he had been holding in his hand at the very moment of the explosion, by the grace and glory of Om?**

---

Meanwhile, some little ways away, in the dark and dusty basement of the Alchemists' Guild, a curious assembly were enjoying some tea and biscuits.

It was watery tea and the biscuits were rather stale, but alchemists are used to poor fare and, after a few months in the lab, _everything_ tastes like formaldehyde.

The group came in all shapes and sizes, insofar as individual features could be discerned under the dark, heavy cloaks they all seemed to be wearing. They sat in a circle, grouped around what appeared to be a bubbling cauldron over open flame.

The fact that the open flame was dark indigo would probably not have comforted any observers.

"Uh...when shall we... six... meet again?" queried a thin, ancient voice.

"We are not witches, and this meeting hasn't occurred in the first place," said another, coldly. "We are rational men of science. Are we not?"

There was a general murmuring of agreement.

"Good. And now, to our young errand boy, how goes your mission?"

One of the cloaks sat up slightly. "Not sure, my lord."

"Not_sure?_"

The cloak managed to give off an impression of uneasiness. "Nossir."

"Explain yourself."

"It landed on his desk, sir, but there was an almighty bang, sir, and then the Duke came through the window..."

"What!"

"Oh, he didn't fall, sir, he was still hanging on, and then Captain Carrot pulled him in, but the potion doesn't seem to have worked."

"Are you sure it landed on target?"

"Oh, yes, sir. Why else would it have exploded like that?"

"You have _met _Vimes before?"

"Sir?"

"Never mind," sighed the figure, sitting back in its chair. "Well, continue persevering, my dear boy. It will pay off. We must have the formula right this time."

"Certainly," echoed the other five. "Certainly."

It is, perhaps, worth noting that the Alchemists' Guild has also Certainly been about to find the correct formula for turning lead into gold for the past five hundred years.

---

After hopefully prodding the prone werewolf a few times, Carrot and Vimes lifted her up bodily and carried her down to Igor's cell. Igor, who was always an obliging fellow, hurried over.

"What can I do for you, thur?"

"Bring her around, for preference," snapped Vimes. "Carrot, tell Cheery to look at that damn desk, would you? And I'll-" he hesitated.

"You'd best go home to Lady Sybil, sir. After all, the party's tonight."

Vimes didn't look happy about it, but he nodded. "I suppose. Bloody Vetinari. Send me a clacks if anything turns up, okay?"

"Yessir," said Carrot.

"Yeth, thur," said Igor.

The Commander elected to walk home. He took a shortcut along one of the alleys behind Elm Street, explicitly did not examine the street across from his office window, and neither did he make a few quiet yet pressing inquiries among various relatively innocent bystanders. By the time he arrived at Scoone Avenue, he was glowing with the warm and fuzzy knowledge that he had succeeded in making everyone foolish enough to be near Pseudopolis Yard at the the time of the explosion just a little bit unhappier than they had been previously, even if he had not actually found anything useful.

Willikins met him at the door.

"Good afternoon, sir. I believe Lady Sybil is waiting for you in the Mildly Yellow Drawing Room."

In fact, she was sitting by the window, darning a pair of his socks.

"Hallo, Sam. I hadn't expected you home quite yet. Did you hear about the party?"

"Unfortunately," murmured Vimes. Sybil flicked him. "Sorry, dear. Er... there's been a bit of excitement at the Watch House..."

"I know. Carrot clacksed me. Your _desk _exploded?"

"So it would seem."

"I did tell you not to eat curry at the office," Sybil pointed out, looking, Vimes felt, altogether too cheerful.

"Haha," he said, in tones entirely free from humor. "I'd like to point out that Angua took one sniff and was out like a light."

"Really? Poor girl. Probably that special Klatchian Fizzbanger**(a)** stuff -"

"Sybil!"

"All right, all right. Give us a kiss."

He did so, grumpily.

"Now, Purity laid out your dress uniform in the bedroom. You can change and read to Young Sam, and then we'll be off."

**(a) A type of packaged curry renowned for both its potency and its suspicious technicolor shades. Occasionally explodes when dropped. A pinch of the powder is enough to make a full meal for any reasonable person. Vimes, however, preferred to enjoy an interesting solution created through the use of two cups of Fizzbanger, an additional gallon of water, for emergencies, and one of those little bread roll things on the side.**

---

Twas a week before Hogswatch, and all through the house, not a creature was sleeping, not even a mouse.

Madam Meserole watched the proceedings with a certain amount of amusement. It had been years since she'd last visited Ankh-Morpork, and now she was wishing she'd gone more often. Oh, Pseudopolis was pleasant, a nice, peaceful city almost entirely free from the excitement of her youth, and she was glad enough for that. At sixty, it was time to enjoy life**(a)** and reap the profits of certain little investments she'd made, here and there.

But there was a _flare _to Ankh-Morpork that Pseudopolis could never match. From the smoke of the air to the screams of the public, the atmosphere was intoxicating**(b)**.

Lady Selachii's famous Hogswatch Ball, less so.

The music wasn't bad, but the buffet, Madam reflected, was simply horrifying. The salad in particular was enough to make the connoisseur weep, or possibly punch someone. She avoided it, on general principles, and stood a little distance away from Lady Louisa and her entourage.

Lady Louisa was the reason for Madam returning to Ankh-Morpork at last.

She was, officially, the ambassador of Pseudopolis to Ankh-Morpork. Unofficially, she was Madam's latest political protegé in the first real test of her honed skills. Madam was quite proud of Louisa, who was, in her not particularly humble opinion, a work of art worthy of her own advanced years, lengthy experience in those matters, and natural talents, and she cut a pretty figure in a crowd of rather mediocre noblewomen.

She was tall and slender, and walked with the air of someone who knew exactly that. Long blond hair, coiled in a perfect bun - check. Wide, slightly glassy blue eyes - check. Pale skin - check. Perfect deportment. Carried her heavy, multi-layered white ballgown well. Attracting the eyes of many a gentleman, Madam observed, and allowed a flicker of a smile to cross her face. It was quite impressive, really. Louisa Garrumond would have been barely recognizable to her own father, who hadn't seen her for six weeks.

Admittedly he probably wouldn't have been _pleased _with the changes instated during the intermittent period, but that was a secondary detail.

She decided that enough mingling was, really, enough, and that Pseudopolis' new delegate's reputation was happily assured in the minds of Morporkian high society. It was time to find her nephew, who was no doubt lurking around here somewhere.

Slipping through the crowd as easily as a very small camel through the eye of a really big needle, although with infinitely more style, Madam made herself known to the rest of the party and kept an eye out for Havelock. She eventually found him, as expected, leaning against the wall in a shadowy corner, examining the other guests.

"Ah, Havelock," she said loudly, "how nice to see you here."

"Hello, Madam," said Havelock, rather unnecessarily drily, in her opinion. "I thought you might come."

"How could I miss an opportunity to see my beloved nephew?"

"How could you indeed," he replied, amused. "And I have no doubt the supervision of the exploits of her ladyship over there have nothing to do with it?"

"Of course not. I have Pseudopolis' best interests in mind, anyway. Are you well?"

"Quite, I assure you."

"Are you sure? You _look _positively skeletal."

"And this is different because...?"

"True," Madam conceded. There was a pause. "I am doing wonderfully, thank you very much," she added.

"So I understand."

She smiled, warmly, although she made sure he caught the slight warning in her voice when she said, "Spying on your dear old aunt, Havelock? Surely not."

"Of course not," he said amiably. "I merely read your correspondence."

They laughed, in the way that a particular type of very intelligent person does. It was a family trait.

"May I direct your attention," he said, when the laughter had trailed off uneasily, "to the couple approaching from the side closest to me?" There was a faint note of real humor in his voice, as if eager to share a joke that no one else had got - or, knowing Havelock, ever would. "They are the Duke and Duchess of Ankh."

"Really? Commander Vimes is here? I was under the impression that he does not often attend parties?"

"Correct. This is a special occasion. Hogswatch's Eve, after all."

"I see."

They turned to look at the pair. The woman, who Madam assumed was Lady Sybil, Vimes' wife, was leading the way. She was a large, friendly looking woman, dressed all in light blue, as was traditional for her sort. Vimes himself was in a rather splendid uniform, and did not appear to be happy about it, although the large red hat he was wearing effectively prevented her from making out any distinct features.

She strode over to greet them, hand outstretched, knowing that otherwise Havelock would introduce her, and Havelock's introductions, while entertaining, were Not Appropriate to situations such as this.

"Lady Sybil and Sir Samuel! I have heard so much about you. I am Madam Roberta Meserole, but everyone calls me Madam..."

Almost at the same moment she had finished her sentence, the Duke of Ankh looked up, sharply.

Madam's eyes met his, and she took a step back...

...because the face staring at her was a face out of history. She had last seen it thirty years ago, two days before the owner's death.

She knew who it belonged to.

It belonged to Sergeant John Keel.

**(a) That is, more so than she had previously, which had, admittedly, required some effort.**

**(b) Madam staunchly refused to acknowledge the variety of jokes that inevitably popped up there. Even the one about the crone, the priest, and the errant rhinoceros.**


	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

_In which a lady in lilac receives no answers and an excess of chemicals makes the plot thicken_

It had been a perfectly pleasant party, or at least a relatively peaceful one. Sybil didn't try to make him dance or talk to Vetinari, no one appeared to be about to commit a crime...

The last bit, actually, was something of a shame, and he was starting to consider the potential of the loose bricks in the garden wall outside vis-a-vis the big, plate glass windows when he saw the approaching Madam.

The face hadn't changed much, though the features were softened slightly by a fine web of wrinkles, and there was more grey in her hair. He barely heard the bright, familiar introduction, but he did catch the pause and sharp intake of breath. The woman opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.

Bloody buggering hell, Vimes thought, summed it up pretty nicely, but he didn't say it aloud because Sybil had Sensibilities.

"Er... Hello, Madam..." he said, trying to regain his composure.

"Is there something wrong?" murmured Sybil into his ear.

"No, nothing..." A thought struck him, and he almost, but not quite**(a)**, smiled. "I was just surprised at how familiar you were. Then it occurred to me where I recognized you from."

"Pardon?"

"My old sergeant's funeral. It must have been, what, thirty years ago...?"

"Ah. Yes," said Madam. "Perhaps that was it."

"I see," said Sybil, but still looked curious. Apparently concluding that it would make things worse to pry**(b)**, she bustled over towards the Patrician and started making conversation at him, to his apparent mild shock.

"_Keel?_" Madam hissed, as soon as Sybil was out of earshot.

"That was the name of my old sergeant, yes," said Vimes evenly.

"You know what I mean."

"You haven't changed much since I last saw you," said Vimes.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," said Madam, with dignity, before going back to prying vigorously. "You look precisely like Keel."

"No, Madam, I don't. Keel had an eyepatch."

"And a beard, as I recall," she retorted. "Although possibly not intentionally. But underneath he must had your face."

"Really? Well, it's amazing how similar men can look." She's not going to believe it, thought Vimes, but she's going to pretend...

There was a pause, after which she smiled at him.

"Of course. Just a passing fancy, I'm afraid. I grow doting in my old age."

"I doubt -"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a line, a shifting darkness, and he started to move, based entirely on instinct.

Then he stopped, because the line had resolved itself into a dart that had pinned his arm to the wall.

"Bugger," he said, in the horrible little pocket of silence that followed.

He prodded the dart. It appeared to have gone through his sleeve but not his arm, and was in fact more correctly classed as a fletched syringe.

He sighed, pulled it out, and bellowed, at the top of his lungs, "DETRITUS!"

One of the 'pillars' at the entrance to the hallway crouched down and knuckled over. Vimes blinked.

"I thought you were covering the back entrance?"

"Yes, sir, but I fort it be best if I switched with Ping when I heard about your desk exploding, sir."

"Oh. Well, good," said Vimes weakly.

The problem, he thought, was that there were _so many places _the would-be assassin could be hiding. The arrow could have been shot from anywhere along the balcony.

"Get some officers to cover the exits," he said finally. "I know, for instance, that Captain Carrot is currently outside on the pretext of learning the names of every single gargoyle who roosts on this building, so it shouldn't be hard."

Then he ran.

There were, on his side, wide stairs curving up to the balcony, but no one on it, assassin or otherwise. He sped up it, accidentally losing his hat in the process**(c)**, and almost skidded when he hit the hardwood floor of the gallery.

Someone was peering out of a narrow doorway at the end of the hall. Lotto!

The figure was hooded, but Vimes was sure he made out eyes widening in terror as it caught sight of the accelerating policeman. It shot back within the room, and he followed soon after...

...but it was gone.

He stared.

The room was in fact more accurately described as a closet, narrow and rough-paneled and dim. The only window was tiny and high on the wall across from him. There was a dark garment lying crumpled on the floor, true, but the person occupying it had completely disappeared.

He walked over to the discarded cloak and picked it up, gingerly, because he did have some experience with mysterious disappearing assassins, although they tended to be rather more efficient than this last one. The dart hadn't even nicked him, which was odd, since the distance between the balcony and where he had been standing wasn't far, although he had moved.

As he backed out of the room, he had the distinct feeling that he had missed something that was staring him in the face.

**(a) He did have a reputation to uphold, after all.**

**(b) This explains almost everything you need to know about the Ramkin bloodline, except for those members of it that died in _other _people's beds.**

**(c) It was subsequently shredded under mysterious circumstances. These have nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Constable Downspout, the very next day, got a pigeon bonus.**

---

Below, the party had resumed. Not many people had noticed anyway, and those who had put it down to too much sherry, with the exception of the Patrician, his aunt, Lady Sybil, and, though she said nothing, Madam Louisa.

Instead, the blonde young woman glided away from her dancing partner and tapped Madam on the shoulder.

"Bobbi," she murmured, "I'm feeling rather overexposed. Do let us return to the embassy."

"I'm sure Jamie can escort you home," said Madam distractedly. "Jamie!"

A solemn twelve-year-old in a really terrible shade of magenta velvet marched over. "Yes, Auntie Bobbi?"

"Be a dear and escort her ladyship back to Pseudopolis, will you? I have to stay and clear certain things up with Havelock."

"Yes, Bobbi," the two chorused. Louisa went, leaving a few dazed gentlemen in her wake. Jamie looked embarrassed and hurried after her. Vetinari watched her go for a moment before turning back and smiling broadly at his companions.

"A most charming young woman, I thought. I do hope Sir Samuel is all right. He's been up there for some time."

Sybil, who had already been looking anxiously over her shoulder at the balcony, took her cue graciously. "I believe I'll go and check on him."

As soon as she had swept out, Madam tugged him forcefully back into the shadows.

"Who was he?"

He grinned, mirthlessly this time. "Ah, you mean His Grace the Duke of Ankh?"

"If that's even his name."

"Oh, but it is, I assure you. Who else, after all, would he be?"

Madam stared into his extremely honest blue eyes for a heartbeat before nodding, sharply. "Of course."

They talked of other things, pretended not to notice when Vimes sped past them, bellowing out various officers' names, and within the hour Madam had disappeared, supposedly to follow her charge home. Vetinari stayed and sipped sherry and, the moment she had left the building, wrote a memo to Drumknott about the valuable services of Clerk Brian and how appropriate they would be in application to certain situations.

---

Vimes arrived at the Watch House just as the clock struck eleven.

"Where's Cheery?" he snapped at Constable Grabthroat, who was dwarfing the desk.

"Loo, I mean lab, sir," said Grabthroat, standing. "Shall I get her-"

Vimes was already heading down the hall.

"Sergeant?"

A small, round helmet came out of the Forensics section's private laboratory, followed soon after by its chain-mail-clad owner.

"Yessir?"

"Well? Do you know what made the desk explode?"

Cheery hesitated. "Uh... not exactly. I've detected trace amounts of, er, several different opiates, but nothing really solid. There's not enough of it to do much comprehensive testing..."

"Well, here, add this to your collection," said Vimes, pulling the dart out of his pocket and setting it on the low wooden table.

"Sir?"

"Someone shot this at me while attending Lady Selachii's lovely Hogswatch ball. It's a syringe, containing a liquid I don't recognize. I thought there _might _be a connection, although I could, of course, be wrong. Or crazy."

"Someone shot at you?"

"Yep. And mysteriously disappeared in a room with its only door covered and a very small window, leaving behind their cloak. It just gets better and better. I'm just thankful," he said shortly, pinching the bridge of his nose, "that it's still a week to actual Hogswatch night, otherwise Sybil wouldn't have let me check in."

"I know how it is, sir," said Cheery sympathetically. "Just the other day Hrolf was complaining about how I spent all my time at work, and never took time off to look at the iconos of some interesting veins of iron ore under Sto Helit."

Vimes gave her a long, long look, which she didn't notice.

"Er... right," he said, coughing politely in order to keep from breaking into completely inappropriate hysterical laughter. "Er... I think I'll just check on how Angua's doing..."  
He beat a hasty retreat to the corridor, took a few deep breaths, and then went down to Igor's cell.

What he saw inside, however, stopped him.

Igors tend to have secret laboratories of a rather more dramatic type than dwarves in any case, even dwarves in high heels and mascara, but things appeared to have changed in the last few hours. For one thing, most of the space now appeared to be taken up by a large, transparent vat full of trapped lightning. Consequently, the space was filled with a pulsating blue glow, which shaded the walls erratically and did nothing to soften the blow when Igor peered down at him from one of the high shelves, bulging olive eyeball magnified by his trademark glass. Vimes bit back a scream.

"Thur!" said Igor, rather more urgently than usual. "Come up here!"

"Huh?" Vimes looked around. On closer examination, he saw the sergeant lying on the slab, face shadowed. Was that a tube coming out of her head?

"Sir, I really mutht inthist -"

At this point, Angua came to.

It was, Vimes admitted later, pretty damn impressive. She was off the slab and in a defensive crouch before he could blink. Her face reminded him, horribly, of Wolfgang after the falls, flickering from wolf to woman and back again, in a state of solid Uncertainty. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, that other parts were... twisting, but her disturbed features took up most of his attention.

He came to a conclusion, pulled out his truncheon, and bopped her on the head with it.

Silver and rosewood, he thought, almost dreamily, watching as her lips peeled back in a growl -

And then, for some reason, everything seemed to collapse back in on itself.

Angua let out a yelp, which Vimes considered was something of a delayed reaction, and sat back on her haunches. He found that all he was staring at was a pleasant-faced young woman with ash blonde hair, looking at him reproachfully.

"Welcome back to the world of the living," he said calmly, replacing the truncheon in his pocket. "Sorry about that, but I always get nervous around growling werewolves. It's a family thing."

It wasn't very sensitive, but he _was _feeling somewhat shaken. Angua sighed and got to her feet, which Vimes took as a gesture of, at least, truce, and he took the opportunity to glare at Igor.

"Did you know that was going to happen, Constable?"

"Not... exactly, sir...**(a)**"

"How odd," said Vimes, pleasantly. "So the tubes connecting the good sergeant's brain to a vat of lightning - those were there just as, what shall we say, a sort of precaution?"

"Well... yes, sir."

"So, in short, you have no idea why she blacked out and you fell back on the good old back-up, a trusty lightning rod?"

Igor looked embarrassed. "Not entirely true, thur. I was pretty sure there would be unuthual thymptomth when she woke up."

"Ah? Ah. That ith-er, is helpful," said Vimes, cursing all unfortunately infectious lisps at intentionally malicious moments. "Of course, if you could have spread a warning through the Watch House, taken certain other precautions, like, for instance, a barricade or small bomb," he said innocently, pretending not to notice Angua's expression, "that might possibly have been helpful, but I'm sure the enlarged butterfly net I see you are still holding in one hand would have worked just as well. Godsdamnit!" he yelled, dropping the Mr. Friendly act, with an almost audible thud. "Is anyone doing something that would possibly be useful? I'm just asking, you understand, out of interest."

"You should calm down, sir," said Angua, who appeared to have completely recovered from her minute of indisposition. "We've all had a long day."

Vimes sagged slightly. "Yes, yes," he grumbled. "Sorry, Igor."

"That'th all right, thur. We all have our little momentth. In fact, if you'd like a tholution for that, I have some pillth right here..."

"No! I mean, er, thanks very much but I think I'll manage," said Vimes, very quickly. "Angua, see me in the canteen?"

A few minutes later, Vimes was leaning against one of the benches while Angua stood at attention at the threshold.

"So, Angua, what happened? Do you remember anything?"

Angua hesitated. "It's not a scent I've ever smelled before, sir. I'm sure of that. But..."

She began, haltingly, to try and describe what she had smelled, and, worse, what she had seen.

Vimes did know something about the way a werewolf's sense of smell worked. Angua used colors as an analogy, but really it could be defined by almost any other sense. Out of kindness towards her less able colleagues, she did her best to keep it consistent, but for some scents, words ran out.

This scent was one of those. Oily, she called it, and, for some reason, purple. It wasn't an entirely bad scent, but it reached down to your deepest levels and flipped all the wrong switches.

He didn't bother to ask her what she meant. He'd seen her face, and insofar as he could tell through the mask of the overlaid forms, and the emotion painted on it was one of complete and utter terror.

**(a) Constable Igor, a modern young Igor who was eager to drag Igoring kicking and screaming into the Century of the Anchovy, had a speech impediment. He occasionally forgot to lisp. This shameful bad habit only got worse when he was agitated. The effects of daily life in Ankh-Morpork, alas, meant that these days Igor barely got a single thur in.**


	3. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

_In which things are afoot, or possibly atentacle, and Louisa Assists The Watch With Its Inquiries._

Almost half a city away from the mild excitement at the Yard, a coach bedecked in suspiciously purple finery rattled over the cobblestones of King's Down. The heavy velvet curtains were closed firmly against any outside eyes.

Within, Madam reclined back on the padded seat, stroking a long, stringy ginger tom idly with one pale finger.

She was distinctly unsatisfied with the events of the evening. It was just as well the actual diplomacy was unofficially officially scheduled for another day, because she sure as hell had other things on her mind for the night.

Havelock, dear boy that he was, would undoubtedly have set a few of his 'agents' on his old auntie. She hadn't bothered to check the coach for innocent recording devices of specialized nature, because it would have been a waste of time. Everything he wanted to know in his city ended up reaching his ears, one way or another. In any case, there was no need to say anything out loud. Madam had half a century's experience of keeping her thoughts to herself, and she didn't intend to stop now.

Most of the mysteries of the evening, she decided, centered around Vimes - if that was even his real name**(a)**. She knew, at a level bone deep, that he was the man she'd first seen thirty years ago. The voice, the face, and the way he responded, all were perfectly matched, down to every particular mannerism she had found peculiar to Keel. He might even, it occurred to her, have been wearing the dress armor mentioned by Rosie Palm, or at least a costume made from the same model. Her cursory description certainly fit it well enough.

Of course, there were still a few minor flaws in the theory that Vimes was Keel. Like, say, the fact that Keel had been murdered and buried and mourned and almost forgotten by the time that Vimes would have been turning twenty, according to her calculations. On the other hand, this was Ankh-Morpork, where tentacled things from other dimensions broke in every other week. Mr. Hong was case in point. If there was magic afoot, it could explain - well, most things possible and impossible, really.

It could not, however, explain Havelock's curious reaction. He had all but told her that Vimes was indeed Keel, or at the very least in some way hiding a secret concerning his identity, and that he himself was in on the game.

And Havelock never did anything without a reason.

She sighed and put her head in her hands, leaving Fluffy to fend for himself a little in the vital area of tummy rubs. The trouble with trying to understand her nephew, Madam thought bitterly, was that he had learned the lessons she had given him all those years ago too bloody well. She had only intended for him to be competent. It seemed to her rather unfair that he had taken her teachings to heart and then betrayed her by using them _properly_.

At this point, her revery was interrupted by a genteel sort of cry.

"Bobbi!"

Recognizing Louisa's voice, she drew back one of the curtains and instructed the coachman to halt. Light footsteps approached quickly, and then the girl's pretty oval face appeared in the window. There was a delicate suggestion of earlier distress in the hint of redness around the eyes.

"Louisa, dear, I thought you took Jamie's coach back to the embassy," Madam said, who was genuinely surprised, although she completely failed to show it.

"We _were_," asserted Louisa. "But he was riding on the roof, you know how boys will be, and then..." She took a deep, shuddery breath.

"And then?"

"And then there was this horrible scream, like a banshee, gave me a fright like you wouldn't believe. I'm positive it was Jamie. So I opened the door to see what was going on, and then the horses went absolutely mad, and I fell out of the coach, and it was _gone _like a shot.

"Well, as you can imagine, I was rather frightened and upset by all this, but I composed myself and soon found that I had, ah, landed in Dimwell. I knew the way, so I set off, and have seen neither hide nor tail of the runaway coach."

Madam listened intently to the curious sequence, and then invited Louisa to ride with her, which the young woman accepted gladly, no doubt eager to escape the smog of a typical Morporkian night.

When they arrived at the Pseudopolis embassy, Louisa dashed out before Madam had time to exhale and hurried into the low stone building. Madam, however, climbed out at a leisurely pace and strolled inside without, and this is important, in any sense following the young ambassador.

Inside, a bewildered James was being harangued by his older cousin. "Louisa? Lou? Are you alright? What's going on?"

Madam smiled wryly and did her best to detach the clearly hysterical young woman from the much beleaguered boy. It was not until Louisa had been pulled off him and, because she was still in a state of great agitation, steered gently but firmly off to bed, that she began asking some questions, which she considered as showing remarkable restraint under the circumstances.

"She'll be all right, love," she said soothingly, patting Jamie, who looked doubtful. "Now, why don't you tell your Auntie Bobbi what happened?"

"I don't know! Everything was normal and then when we arrived Lou wasn't in the coach. We were just about to go back and look for her when you came in."

"I see," said Madam, thoughtfully. "Odd."

He gave a start. "Why? What did you think happened?"

"Oh, I don't know." She stared at him for a moment, until he shifted uncomfortably. His magenta suit was mudstained, and there were leaves in his hair.

"So nothing out of the ordinary happened?"

"No, ma'am."

If he was lying, he was doing so well, which always earned points with Madam, who was the sort of person who would applaud their own murder if it was done with style.

"Am I in trouble?"

"No. Run along to bed. I have to take care of a few things, that's all..."

He disappeared.

"More curious and more curious," she said, to no one in particular, and was aware of two sensations: the faint uneasiness that always accompanies a mistranslated incident of morphic resonance, and the more traditional feeling of overwhelming embarrassment at hearing those words coming out of her mouth.

**(a) The fact that Havelock had told her it was meant absolutely nothing. In a situation like this, Havelock's word was about as trustworthy as a chocolate hammer.**

---

Elsewhere, in the Patrician's Palace...

"...Octeday..." murmured a quiet, precise voice. There was a thump. "...snow's all been melted from today's heat wave..."

It was dark in the dim hall, but that didn't bother the dark figure hopping from one stone to the other.

After all, he had so many better things to be bothered about.

"...two, four, six, eight," he finished, and rapped twice on the door.

Leonard of Quirm opened the door and greeted him with a happy smile.

"Oh, hello, my lord. Do come in."

The light of the hundreds of lamps scattered around the attic illuminated Lord Vetinari's austere visage.

The inventor beckoned for him to come in, and he did so, with some trepidation. His eyes kept being drawn to the large glass sphere full of some viscous emerald fluid Leonard was tossing lightly from hand to hand.

"What is the problem, my lord?"

Vetinari did not answer immediately, opting instead to take the opportunity to sit down in an armchair wedged between two easels and cleverly disguised from one side by a mountain of notebooks. Once he was comfortably perched, he said quietly, still staring at the sphere,

"Is that it? The potion I asked you to make? You are sure?"

"Why, yes," said Leonard, looking somewhat derailed. "Er, my lord, what did you need this for again?"

"What? Ah... personal experimentation, Leonard. It does not concern you. Do you have the ingredients list?" He delicately lifted the orb from the table in one thin hand, bringing it up to eye level. The slightly unnatural movement of the liquid seemed to fascinate him.

"Here it is. Will you stay for tea, my lord?"

"I must fly, unfortunately. Perhaps another day."

Then he was gone.

Leonard watched the closed door for a while. He was not the sort of person who was easily unnerved, but there was something faintly _wrong_ about the whole business.

Then he shrugged, and went back to designing his Device For Burning Bread, Or Possibly Bagels.

---

Vimes was having a nightmare.

It involved flowered curtains and Nobby Nobbs, and when he finally managed to wake up it was with a scream.

"Wstfrgl?" murmured Sybil, next to him.

He opened his eyes wide and stared fixedly at the canopy for a moment in the hope that its vivid blue shade would purge his mind of the dream-images. He was breathing hard.

"What's wrong?" asked Sybil, awake now.

"Nightmare," muttered Vimes. "Don't ask."

"Right then," said Sybil amiably, and went back to sleep. Vimes looked at her for a while in silence, before getting up, pulling on a dressing gown, and padding out of the room, careful all throughout not to make any noise. Yesterday had been a long day for both of them. No need to make his wife lose sleep over his own Nobbs-induced insomnia.

It was early in the morning, just after dawn, and grey light filtered in through the windows,weak stuff that had already been swallowed and recycled twice by the thick gumbo**(a)** of a fog outside. Bloody odd weather, thought Vimes to himself. A day hotter than all those of summer combined coming in the middle of the famously icy Ankh-Morpork winter, right after a perfectly normal stretch of below zero weather, and followed, now, by a rolling white fog that to the connoisseur was obviously a thick spring mist, not a light winter smog.

The weather had gone mad, he concluded, and promptly forgot about it.

Feeling restless, he wandered into Young Sam's room and drew up a chair to the crib where his son rested.

It was there his wife found him, several hours later, snoring quietly. She shook him by the shoulder.

"Huh?"

"Message from the Yard, Sam."

He looked suddenly alert. "What is it?"

"Carrot says there's been some funny business with those charming ladies we met last night, you remember, Sam," she said, with what Vimes considered to be a rather pointed look, "the one you recognized from your old sergeant's funeral and her friend, that nice Madam Louisa?"

He was out the door almost before she finished her sentence. Sybil sighed, and murmured to herself, "Well, he'll find out about the rest of it once he gets there..."

**(a) The more traditional phrase is "thick as pea-soup," but the poetic license laws made by Olaf Quimby II resulted in a revision of the saying when in reference to Ankh-Morpork's fog, which is notably rather thicker and fishier than any form of pea soup, even one that was eighty six days old.(b)**

**(b) A reference to another example of Ankh-Morpork Special Editing of a traditional nursery rhyme, when a comprehensive survey revealed that _no one_ in the entire city had ever even tried a single taste of nine day old pea soup. In fact, no one ate pea soup after it had aged even one day, because Ankh-Morpork citizens do have some common senses as a collective entity, despite evidence to the contrary. At first this discovery caused much wailing and tearing of hair among those individuals who cared about nursery rhymes in the first place, since Quimby's legislation meant that it was absolutely impossible to read that charming little song to one's children without have deficiencies in the general region of the head, such as the fact that if one nodded it fell off. Then, however, it was discovered that one very old woman made a habit of eating pea soup precisely, to the minute, eighty six days after she had first cooked it, and the rhyme, after being suitably re-edited, regained its status as respectable children's entertainment, and all five people who had heard of the issue rejoiced.**

---

Carrot took out a notebook, carefully licked the nub of his pencil, and said cheerfully,

"Well, ma'am, whenever you're ready."

"Call me Louisa," she murmured, batting her eyelashes at him. Carrot paused and gave her a concerned look.

"Do you have something in your eye? Irritation can be very dangerous -"

"No, no," she assured him, wondering inwardly why she always got stuck with the dumb ones. "I'm fine."

"I see. Carry on, then."

The narrative went on for some while. At one point she was forced to do a little pantomime to get the point across in a suitably dramatic fashion.

When she had finished, and the sound of Captain's laborious writing had died away, Carrot chewed on his thumb for a while, re-reading what he had entered in the rough pages.

"Very good. Thank you. We will be investigating this as soon as possible."

He exited.

Louisa watched him go, and when the door had closed behind him she let out a most unladylike snort. Man wouldn't recognize innuendo if it was dropped on his head from great height, she decided. Pity, she could have done with a distraction, something to redirect Madam's inquisitiveness with.

Another Watchman came in, a young woman this time. She had short, dark hair and a disturbingly pale face, the color of which made Louisa think of dead men's flesh, and, when she smiled, without showing her teeth, something - some things - white and sharp glimmered. Louisa made an educated guess.

"Constable Sally von Humpeding, I presume?"

The vampire's face went carefully blank. "Correct. Do I know you?"

"Only by reputation, if at all," said Louisa, with an easy smile. "You're quite well-known among political circles. Your appointment caused a very large stir."

"Really," said Sally, in tones that could have preserved meat for a year. Preferably meat that had once been the living tissue of Madam Louisa of Pseudopolis, if at all possible.

"Oh, yes. I understand Commander Vimes was most unhappy about it."

"He was not exactly overcome with joy. What's it to you?"

"Oh, I just think it's so fascinating to see women, live and undead, making their way in the world!" She gave a fairly convincing giggle. "My friends and I thought it was just wonderful, you and Sergeant Angua doing so well."

"I'm honored." There was a certain finality to the way the vampire said it. "In any case, the reason I am here is to go with you to the embassy."

"I don't understand. Why are you coming with me?" said Louisa, who understood perfectly.

"In order," said Sally, "to ask a few questions. One way or another."

She grinned, then. Toothily.


	4. Chapter Four

**Chapter Four**

_In which certain inconsistencies are revealed in the official records and a female dwarf is endarkened_, _to her colleagues' dismay_

Commander Vimes came in barely seconds after Sally and Louisa had left, and was greeted perfunctorily by Carrot, who looked like his thoughts were elsewhere.

"What's been happening since yesterday, Captain?"

"Lots, sir," said Carrot, still distant.

"Oh? Do tell."

"Well, sir, the Psuedopolis ambassador - Lady Louisa's her name - came over not an hour ago, wanted to see you, sir, but when I told her you weren't in she said that was fine and she just wanted assurance that the Watch was investigating her problem. She was very complimentary."

"I'm sure," said Vimes, rolling his eyes. "Go on. What did she say?"

"Apparently -" Carrot consulted his ever present notebook "- some very strange events occurred during the ride home from the ball..."

Vimes waited patiently. Carrot had dutifully written down every word she uttered during her report, and a good deal of it was not relevant in any way whatsoever to the problem at hand but was extremely relevant to the problem they would have had if Angua had been in the room while Louisa was visiting**(a). **He eventually got an idea of what had happened.

"So she heard a yell outside the coach which she says was made by this lad Jamie, she opened the door and looked out to try to see what was going on, the horses reared, she fell out, and then they bolted?"

"Yessir. And then she started walking home, but was picked up on the way by her mentor, Madam Meserole."

Vimes leaned against the reception desk. "Huh. I _hate _mysteries," he said shortly, trying not to show the slight relief he felt. He'd been more than a bit worried that Madam would make inquiries about his identity among his fellow watchmen, which could have been... interesting, but apparently not."What did you think about all this, Carrot?"

"I don't know, sir. But..." Carrot looked awkward.

"Yes?"

"...I'm not sure Louisa is a reliable witness. Sir."

"You think she's crazy?"

"Oh, I would never think such a thing, sir," said Carrot hurriedly. "Just a little overwrought, maybe."

"I see.What else?"

"Well, sir, I sent her back to the embassy and I had Constable von Humpeding go with her, to ask some questions."

"No doubt. And?"

"And Cheery says she has some more results for us. On the chemicals in your office and on the dart, sir?"

"Oh, _goody_."

**(a) i.e., a bloody mess and a good deal of paperwork.**

---

The hairs were rising on the back of Sally's neck**(a)**.

Louisa, she thought to herself, was a perfectly charming young woman with her breed's normal attention span, which was about negative six seconds. That should have been the only thing that was bothering her, and indeed, that wouldhave been normal.

It wasn't that.

The woman's heartbeat was normal, maybe even verging on slow.

It wasn't that.

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and did her best to listen to the never ending stream of light, pointless chatter, in case something useful bobbed up on the current. It was a slim chance, but then, it was practically her entire job to make the most of slim chances. Still, there are some things it is impossible for even a vampire to do, and one of those was apparently to make any coherent sense of her ladyship's magnificently small talk.

Instead, she simply sat as far away from her as possible in the coach, nodded vaguely when it seemed appropriate, and clutched her black ribbon really, really tightly.

She _did _hear the 'and this is where I fell out of the coach.' She noted the street name, and the place on the street, using a few temporary landmarks to fix the location in her mind.

Well, she would have _something _to show for her excursion. Which was good. She didn't particularly want to have to deal with one of Mister Vimes' looks. She was having a bad day as it is.

"We're here!" announced Louisa cheerfully, some time later. Sally forced a charming smile and said "Yes, I can see that," before leaping out of the coach with unseemly speed.

In the coach, Louisa smirked to herself and slipped out after the vampire, rather more daintily.

The embassy was donated by some ancient baron who'd had a relative in Pseudopolis, but it bore little resemblance to an old-fashioned manor house; Bloody Stupid Johnson had got his hands on it at some point in the last century, and what mere building style could outlive that**(b)**? What it did mean, however, was that there were big stone gates completely surrounding the place, and that Sally had to wait at the gate for Louisa to catch up, because only her ladyship had the key.

It was an odd gate. Not in appearance; old cast iron, twisted into menacing shapes with intermittent pretty botanical patterns, the norm in this area, with that special accent of rust that really gives it authenticity.

Most humans probably wouldn't have noticed anything wrong, or would have ignored the sensation even if they had. Sally knew better**(c)** than that. There was, yes, a lingering hint of something. Maybe a scent, or a taste in the air.

It made her fangs grow. Damn.

Nothing she could do about it now, but she filed it away to think about later.

Louisa finally arrived, looking convincingly dismayed. "Be an absolute dear and don't run off like that again, will you? I still feel absolutely horrid after all this excitement."

She didn't bother to answer. The ribbon in one hand was cutting into the skin, she was gripping it that tightly.

"Thank you, Constable," said the other woman, apparently taking her silence as an affirmative. She unlocked the gate and strode through without another word. Frowning slightly to herself, the vampire followed.

Inside, an elderly woman Sally assumed was Madam Meserole waited. This one's heartbeat was faster, though not unduly so. Trying to think of things not at all related to the - the b-word, Sally concentrated on her appearance. Medium height, tall for a woman, curving still in the right places despite her age. Grey curls, still retaining a few streaks of chestnut, and wide brown eyes. Dressed all in purple.

It wasn't helping.

"I am Madam Roberta Meserole," said the lady, warmly enough, after a slightly too long pause.

"Constable von Humpeding. I'm here to investigate certain events the Watch understands occurred last night."

"Good," said Madam, briskly. "Jamie, come in."

She heard his heartbeat before even registering the words. This was getting bad - but, ooh, this one was nervous. Very, very much so. His heart was pounding fast enough that it was difficult to differentiate between the individual beats.

Armed with the knowledge that here was a very nervous boy indeed, she turned to see the newcomer properly (without thinking of the sound of his blood rushing through his veins at all, fresh, sweet, rich) and discovered that 'Jamie' was short, thin, and roughly twelve years old. He wore some horrible monstrosity in burgundy velvet, and looked pale and faintly guilty.

It was almost too easy. Clearly he was at the center of this mess.

"Mr. James," Sally said, formally, "I understand you were riding the coach at the time this business went on?"

She kept a straight face, even as her mind replayed that sentence back to her in her ears.

"Yes'm."

"What do you remember?"

"It was a perfectly normal ride, miss, except for the fact that when we arrived Lou wasn't-Louisa wasn't in the coach like she ought to have been."

It's difficult to surprise a vampire, but Sally was at the very least interested. She didn't bother to correct him on her rank, instead saying,

"So you have no memory of, say, horses rearing, screams in the night, Louisa falling out of the coach... nothing like that?"

"No, miss."

"How odd."

"Pardon?"

"I find that curious, sir, because your older sister here gives a rather different account."

"She does?" He looked panicked.

"There are discrepancies, yes."

"Louisa? What's going on? I only just go up," he added, reproachfully, to the room in general.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Sally, sweetly. "I won't intrude on your time much longer. One last thing; who was the coachman who was driving you?"

"His name's Thomas, and he's also the groom." This from Louisa. "You do believe me, don't you?"

"Would he be in the stables, then?" she asked, ignoring the question.

"Probably. But-"

She saluted before the stupid girl could say anything, and stalked away to look for a kosher butcher's shop, because it looked like she would need some fortification for this interrogation. Now.

**(a) At least, they would have been, had she actually had any hairs on the back of her neck. But she didn't. So they weren't.**

**Er.**

**(b) Although as Carrot commented later, there were some really fascinating architectural devices that still lingered in the corners, traces of Ankh-Morpork's glorious history. He was unable to continue on that vein, however, because of the sudden need to save his girlfriend from death by choking. On coffee.**

**(c) The adjective is up for debate. These are coppers we're talking about here.**

---

Cheery's workspace was quite dark; for reasons unknown to the two officers, she appeared to have propped a board against the single, lonely window and blown out the dribbly candles. In fact, Vimes couldn't see her at all.

"Cheery?"

"_H'rak a'ghu'r'rak!_**(a)**"

"...Carrot? What'd she say?"

"Er, er... she says to, uh, go away..."

"What? Why? Didn't she ask us to come here? And why's she speaking Dwarfish?"

"I don't know, sir. _H'kaz'a 'rajr pao'ik, t'rakk?_**(b)**"

"_Kraz'k'uum!_"

"Er, she says she won't talk to a human..."

Vimes blinked. "Who are you and where did you put Cheery?" he demanded, staring at the darkness.

"Sir," said Carrot, gently prodding him.

"All right, all right," he muttered, backing away. "What's gotten into everyone lately?"

As he left, he was sure he saw light glinting off the tip of a pickaxe.

**(a) Lit. "Remove yourself at speed, tall person of uncertain birth who is in this place at this time." Translates more idiomatically as: "Fuck off, you bastard."**

**(b) Lit. "Second Shaft Operator, what appears to be incorrect(c)?" Translates more idiomatically as: "What's wrong, Sergeant?"**

**(c) Lit. "That which has an insufficient amount of scaffolding and may at any point fall in on the head of the unwary miner".**

---

He met Constable von Humpeding, who appeared to be in a state of great excitement, at the front room.

"What did you learn, Humpeding?"

"Nothing very helpful, Mister Vimes. You won't like it."

"Try me."

She told him. He didn't like it.

"So either she's lying, the kid and the coachman are lying, or they're all lying, or something strange is going on. Stranger. And something about the house, or maybe this Madam Louisa, made you uneasy and tempted you to break your pledge - don't look at me like that, Constable, I can see the way your holding that damn ribbon - and no one on the street she supposedly landed in saw anything. Have I got that right?"

"Sir. For what it's worth, the kid was really, really nervous, but that could mean lots of things. You pretty much covered it."

"Pity," he said dryly. "I don't even know if this is our area. Maybe she was hallucinating! Carrot already said he thought she wasn't the sanest person ever to set foot here."

"Doesn't explain why she wasn't in the coach when they arrived and why they didn't notice anything during the ride, sir."

"I know. Bugger." He paused. "Could she have not gotten into the coach at all?"

"No, the coachman definitely heard her get in."

"Well, that's one theory out the window."

"Unfortunately true."

Vimes looked at her speculatively. "Can vampires sense magic?"

"I know what you're thinking, sir, but the answer is not really. If it's strong enough we can smell it, but there wasn't any on the street where she said she came out, or at least, not enough to trigger my senses. Maybe Anuga will be able to find something I can't."

"I doubt it. This doesn't feel like magic, exactly."

"Nossir."

A thought struck him. "Actually, why don't you talk to Angua? I think she's resting in Igor's cell after her little moment."

Sally looked puzzled. "What I should I talk about with her?"

"Tell her about the temptation you felt at that manor, and then ask her about what she felt, when she came to, and just... just think about it, all right?"

"You suspect something, sir?"

"Let's just say I have a few other ideas. Go on!"

She walked away, still giving him the occasional bewildered glance over her shoulder. He sighed and sat down at one of the empty desks where Watchmen wrote their reports, trying to think.

A few minutes later, he was brought back to the present by Carrot's voice saying,

"I don't understand what's gotten into her, sir. She's acting very strangely."

"How so?"

"She was completely covered in chain mail, sir, traditional stuff not at all like her usual attire. And lots of added weaponry. When I asked her about the alchemical stuff she said that it was for soft people, and then she started singing about gold."

"Really? Any good?"

"She was completely off-key, too."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Not your fault, sir. And then she stopped talking to me entirely. Oh, and she said before that that she was planning to change her last name to, er, Kickarse."

"Something of an upgrade from her old one," said Vimes automatically.

"I'm sure you don't mean that," said Carrot severely.

"No, of course not. This is all very odd, Captain. Why all these mysteries at once? Is there some sort of madness epidemic running through our sergeants? I just hope Colon doesn't get it next."

"No, sir," said the younger man earnestly. Vimes watched the comment fly over his head and sighed again.

"Tell the men I'm going on patrol. I could do with a walk," he said abruptly, standing up and almost knocking the chair over. "I need to think about this mess."

"You do have an appointment with Lord Vetinari in an hour, Mister Vimes."

"An hour's a long time in the exciting world of... whatever, Carrot."

"Yes, sir," said the Captain, dubiously. "If you say so, sir."

"Well, I do."

With that, he went out into the streets, cigar smoke trailing behind him.


	5. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

_In which the bell tolls for Vimes and Vimes alone and two out of three Uberwaldean __females have a two-hearts-to-heart chat_

As the cracked bronze bell of the Teachers' Guild struck twelve, Vimes ascended the steps to the Oblong Office.

Drumknott glanced up when he entered the reception area but made no comment, so Vimes assumed that he was supposed to wait for however long Vetinari felt necessary until his brain had been reduced to a suitable consistency of porridge. He sat down in one of the uncomfortable chairs and settled back to wait.

Tick...tock.

He resisted the temptation to smoke.

Ticktock.

What had happened, any way? One day everything appeared normal, the next Watchmen were going mad left and right. Not just sergeants, really, 'cos clearly Sally had been pretty badly affected as well.

Tick. Tock.

Symptoms? Hah. Cheery practically going _drudak'ak _and Angua waking up Uncertain and Sally about to break her Pledge... what is it with the Uberwaldeans these days?

...tick...tocktick.

An epidemic, he'd said earlier. Viral, possibly. But it wasn't as if they were having the_ same _problems...

Tock.

Not the _same _problems...

"Lord Vetinari will see you now," said Drumknott. Vimes started at the sound of his voice, but recovered quickly and stood up smoothly enough. He opened the door and went in to the office.

"Ah, Vimes," said Vetinari, laying down his pen and carefully pushing the paperwork to one side.

"Sir."

"Please sit. I understand there's been quite a lot of excitement."

"Yes, sir." He didn't sit. He was jittery, frankly, and not in the mood to be standing still, let alone resting any more than he had to.

"Well?"

"There's been some... funny business with the Pseudopolis embassy."

The left eyebrow raised. "Oh? I hope there has been no... trouble with Madam Meserole," the Patrician said delicately.

"Besides the whole you arranging for me to meet her thing?" said Vimes, secure in the knowledge that if Vetinari killed him now Sybil would come to complain, "No, nothing. I'm talking about the coach ride after the party. You know? The one where the two passenger's stories of what happen totally disagree except in one aspect, where they're exactly the same and equally mysterious?"

"I may have heard something of that nature," said Vetinari, unperturbed. "How go the Watch's enquiries, then?"

"Nowhere."

"I see." The other man stood up, in one fluid motion, and went to the window. "And have you discovered the source of the attacks on your own person?"

"Well, sir, we're not really sure that they're attacks on me, per se."

"Your desk exploding? Someone shooting a loaded syringe at you? It seems aggressive enough."

"Er... yes and no, sir. We haven't actually identified the liquid as poisonous."

"And the desk?"

"It wasn't a very effective explosion, was it? I mean, unless their intention was to blow me out the window, but if they could get something inside, why not just throw a properly destructive chemical if they wanted me dead?"

"That is, of course, the question."

Vimes didn't answer, since while he wasn't certain it was the question, he was certain it was a rhetorical one. Until he got his hands on the perpetrator, that was.

In the ensuing silence, Vimes decided to broach the Other Subject.

"Why _did _you tell me to go to that party?" he asked.

"I was not aware that my aunt was a member of the Pseudopolis embassy," said Vetinari, distantly.

"Really."

"Indeed." There was a hint of warning in the man's voice, and Vimes knew better than to push it, because even if Sybil came to complain, _he _would still be learning lots of exciting new things about the life and times of _Androctonus crassicauda_**(a)**

He saluted, ironically enough to make his personal feelings clear. "Sir."

"Thank you, Commander. That would appear to be all."

Vimes left.

After a while, the Patrician opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a clear sphere full of viscous green fluid. He stared at it for a moment.

He started, after a few minutes, to get the impression it was staring back.

**(a) Also known as the fat-tailed scorpion. No one knows why they are called this(b), since their tails are really more muscled, or possibly big-boned, than fat.**

**(b) Except for the person who first dubbed it that, presumably, but they don't count.**

---

Sally went, reluctantly, down to Igor's cell.

Vimes, had he been there, would have been surprised to observe the changes that had taken place in the time since he had last seen it. The lightning tank had been stowed away somewhere, the slab had been pushed back to the center of the room, and next to it was a new, gleaming stainless steel tray, loaded heavily with all sorts of strange, bubbling chemicals, which Sergeant Angua was regarding with interest but keeping well away from.

"Hi," she said, closing the door behind her.

"Oh, it's you. What are you doing here?" said Angua.

"Thanks," said the constable, with heavy sarcasm, "for the warm greeting. Mister Vimes wants me to talk with you."

"Is he still upset about that business with the bar that burnt down? Because frankly -"

"No," said Sally shortly. "He wanted me to talk to you about the... whatever it was you smelled in his office."

"Why?"

Sally told her, succinctly, about what exactly she'd been dealing with from the moment she'd got in the coach onwards.

"Hmm," said the werewolf. "He thinks there's a connection between the Pseudopolis embassy and his desk?"

Sally tried not to grin and shook her head. "He thinks there's a connection between the Pseudopolis embassy and his _lack thereof_."

"Ha. I suppose that makes sense. They did arrive on the same day, and sitting next to that Lady Louisa made you... ah... what was that charming term? Major Clogston used it in Borogravia, remember? Tetchy, that was it."

"Yes."

"Well... you could say what I had was a similar experience..."

Vampires and werewolves don't get along. They may be friendly on the surface of it, but underneath it's always been a rivalry. It's often assumed this is because they are so different; the one shaggy, crude, bestial, while the other is refined, stylish, always polite, even - especially - to the death.

This is untrue. The real reason vampires and werewolves dislike each other lies in their similarities, not their differences. The sense of superiority - and the subsequent indignation at the impudence of humanity, or, for that matter, the rest of the undead. The thirst for power and control, in any form.

The thirst, too, for blood.

But while these things meant that a stake-out**(a)** with Sally and Angua could get rather heated, they also meant that the one was uniquely equipped to understand the plight of the other. Sally listened and understood on a purely instinctual level in a way no human, or, for that matter, dwarf or troll could.

When the sergeant had finished, they sat in silence for a while.

"That sounds like it could be the same thing. Some sort of smell that causes... lust for the b-word..." Sally winced slightly. "That could bring on the - the wolf, right?"

"Probably."

"And if it was in the coach I would have sensed it."

"But why did it knock me out and not you? And why the hell would someone throw a chemical causing bloodlust into Vimes' office? That's just asking for trouble."

"It clearly doesn't affect humans. Both Vimes and Carrot have been in the office and haven't been affected at all."

"Damn. We don't have enough evidence, do we."

"Not really. Especially since we're both undead, which doesn't really set us up as trustworthy witnesses in any case, in the eyes of the rest of the world. Plus, we can't prove we're not just losing our grip."

Angua sighed. "So what do we do?"

"Wait for something more solid."

"That's not a lot of help." She paused. "Look, you should tell Mister Vimes our... suspicions at least. Even if he can't do anything about them now, it might at least start him on the right path."

"Be worth more if we knew where the bloody destination was."

"Hopefully," said Angua, smiling in a not-very-happy sort of way, "it's not our final one."

**(a) Pun not intended, despite its repeated use in previous commentary on the idea of vampires on the Watch. No, really.(b)**

**(b) Well, all right. Maybe just a little.**

---

While Sally and Angua chatted, Madam was riding in her coach through the streets of Ankh-Morpork and brooding. It had once been her favorite pastime when she needed to do some thinking, all those years ago...

It was another unnaturally nice day. The sun hung heavy in the sky like the yolk of the proverbial hard-boiled egg, and said sky was unbelievably blue. Admittedly the lovely shade was rather effectively ruined close up by the smoke and soot rising off the city, but if you kept your head turned directly upwards it was pretty.

Not a white Hogswatch this year, it seemed.

She glanced out of the window, watching without seeing the roiling crowd of humanity that was spread across the cobblestones.

The whole trip was turning out to be _most _irritating. She had sent out quite a few of her private agents, waved wads of cash by her aural appendages, and generally made a lot of fuss, but she knew nothing more than she had previously. At least, nothing useful.

No one knew of any secret past of Vimes. He was not the sort of person to get tangled up in magical activities; indeed, as far as she could tell the man disliked magic with a passion rivaled only by his dislike for assassins, kings, and the undead.

The whole business was rather strange.

And there was the other thing. Louisa had been positively defiant when she had demanded a proper explanation of what had happened the night of the ball, consistently bursting into tears whenever Madam tried to get any amount of detail. She was positive that the young woman was hiding something, and her usual methods weren't working.

Madam resolved that she was not going to take on another student. They weren't supposed to use it against _her_, after all, yet they inevitably did.

Jamie had become quite a bit less convincing today. Strain did that to liars sometimes - once one crack showed in their veneer, it all fell to pieces. Pity. He showed some talent last night, but she couldn't have an inconsistently competent member of her little class, and besides, if he had been hiding something from her it would be back to his parents he went.

Feeling slightly better with this resolved, she settled further back into her seat. One toe tapped the floor of the carriage thoughtfully.

One, two, three...

There was a creak. Madam blinked, gently removed her foot, and looked down.

A section of the floor had popped up slightly.

After a moment of holding her breath, she lifted the lid of the secret compartment with the side of one perfect, slingback stiletto**(a) **shoe.

It was empty, and rather dusty. In the center, however, was an area where the dust appeared to have been disturbed, and recently. There was a dark stain just next to it.

Madam regarded it for a while. Then she smiled and shut the lid.

"Harris?" she called out to the driver. "Stop at Pseudopolis Yard on the way back, will you? I need to speak with Commander Vimes."

**(a) It is perhaps worth noting here that Vetinari women didn't mess around with similes like 'sharp as a stiletto knife'. The shoe simply had a stiletto blade where Cheery would have, until her recent affliction, welded a copper heel. Madam's current status in Pseudopolis owed as much to her taste in footwear and ability to kick like a mule, discreetly, as to her political savvy.**

---

Prior to Madam's discovery, in the aforementioned Yard...

Vimes was mournfully sorting through some of the mounds of paperwork. He missed his stacks. They had been familiar to him. He had been particularly fond of the one which called itself Hubert and kept him company late at night when he was working on a difficult report, although when it had started talking about the historio-political ramifications of the Diet of Bugs he had reluctantly begun to consider about calling an exterminator.

Sally came in, silently.

"Yes, Constable?"

"Er... I talked with Angua, like you said, sir."

"And?"

"We thought that our... difficulties might have been caused by the same thing, theoretically speaking."

"A chemical solution, for instance?"

"Yessir."

"So you think it's possible the same stuff was in the coach at some point."

"Sir."

"But you don't have any solid evidence, which is why you're looking at me shiftily."

"Sir."

"I see." Vimes sighed. And that still doesn't explain Cheery, he thought. "Well, there's not much I can do about it just yet. I can set some of the gargoyle officers on all three, I suppose. And the coachman?"

"Maybe just in case, sir."

"Right." He stuck his head out the window and bellowed "DOWNSPOUT?"

"YEH' 'UR?" drifted over from the roof across the street.

"Get Pediment and Cornice over here! I need you to pay special attention to a couple inconvenient individuals."

"Igh' a-ae, 'ur."

"Good man. Or whatever it is." He turned back to Sally. "Think they'll see anything?"

She hesitated, and then said frankly, "Doubt it, sure."

"I didn't think so either. We can only hope for the best."

Sally nodded and descended the stairs.

She was far enough down that when she saw Madam approaching at speed, she was too far away for Vimes to hear the gasp.

Which was a pity, all things considered, because he really could have done with a warning.

Or, better yet, a drink.


	6. Chapter Six

**Chapter Six**

_In which the Watchmen fail to be surprised by the secret compartment, for once and the umpteenth shoe is dropped with a bang_

"S- Your Grace?"

Over the years, Vimes had acquired a great deal of control over his expressions. It was the sort of gift that came of having been shot at and stabbed at for almost seven years solid, with occasional breaks for tea time on both sides. So it was that he was able to glance up at Madam Roberta Meserole with a completely impassive expression.

"Good afternoon, Madam," he said. "What's the problem?"

She didn't bother with the niceties. "I understand you and your good men -" Vimes had a sudden coughing fit, which she ignored "- are investigating this unpleasant business with my companions?"

"Er, yes," said Vimes weakly, once he had recovered. "That's right."

"Then something I discovered just now may interest you."

"What is it?"

"I think you had best see for yourself." She swept out of the room, a fine layer of dust rising up from where her skirt swooshed past. Cursing under his breath, he followed.

Her coach was parked around the side of the Watch House. It was, to his complete lack of surprise, completely done up in purple. Madam, who he realized was standing next to the open door, presumably used it as a sort of camouflage.

"It's inside, Commander."

He looked.

A trapdoor had been opened up in the floor to reveal a fairly shallow opening, useful only for storing fairly flat things, like, say, a crossbow. It was coated in a thin layer of dust, which had in one central area been disturbed. Vimes frowned at it. There was also a discolored patch that could have been water or could have been something else.

Well, he knew what _his_ bet was on. He stood back and met Madam's eyes.

"Did you know about this compartment?" he asked, on a hunch.

"Why, yes," she said, innocently. "I had it custom installed. For practical purposes, you understand."

"And...?"

"But I don't believe I ever got around to telling Louisa about it. And I make sure to close and lock it after I've removed everything I need from it."

"Then that _does _seem curious. I assume you found it unlocked and open, then?"

"Unlocked, and not closed properly."

He waved a hand. "Right. Hmm."

Vimes glared at the stain for a while, and then said, flatly, "Thank you for showing me this, Madam. I'll be with you in a moment."

He dashed into the Watch House, to the dismay of Corporal Ping, who was unfortunate enough to be standing near the door at the time, and snapped "Right, everyone! Listen up!

Who saw Sally last?"

"Me, sir," volunteered Mica, a troll officer. "She just went out on patrol with Nobby."

"Damn. Nobby? _Damn._**(a)**"

He deliberated for a moment and then headed down to Igor's cell.

Angua looked up as Vimes entered. "Sir? Is something the matter?"

"In specific or in general?" he said, and then, without waiting for an answer, continued, "Yes. Look, do you think that smell would knock you out if you smelled it again?"

"I... maybe, sir. It could just have been shock, from, from the you know-"

"Are you willing to see? I wouldn't normally ask this, but Sally's out and it's already a day old; I don't want to wait any longer than I have to."

"Are you sure it's the same scent?"

"No, I'm not. It was in Madam's coach, though."

"Oh." She hesitated for a moment, then stood up. "I'll go, sir."

"Good. C'mon."

They proceeded back outside at a more leisurely pace, and discovered Madam chatting pleasantly with Carrot, who had just returned from his shift, which Vimes considered to be entirely typical for both of them.

"Move, Carrot," he said cheerfully.

"Sorry, sir," said the red-haired young man, stepping to the side. Madam looked amused, but Vimes was more interested in Angua's reaction.

She was eyeballing**(b)** the compartment with a definite air of unease, but at least she didn't seem to be on the verge of collapse. At one point she leaned fully in to get a better - view wasn't exactly the word, he supposed. Whatever. Scent, perhaps.

Eventually, she stood up and, sparing one sideways glance at Madam, nodded mutely.

He winced slightly. "The same?"

"The very same."

Bloody, bloody damn. "It's certainly relevant to the case, Madam. Unfortunately there's not much we can tell you, as yet."

"No? Are you sure?"

Vimes sure he could hear a slight double meaning. "_Yes, _Madam."

"What a pity. We are glad of your assistance, of course. Good day to you, Sergeant Angua. Gentleman." With a brilliant smile, she got back into the coach and closed the door.

Vimes was about to ask her to stop and wait for them to get their forensics unit head's expert analysis, but then he remembered their forensics unit head had apparently gone mad and, sighing, watched them go.

**(a) To be fair, Vimes' reaction had as much to do with last night's dreams as any recent misdemeanor of Nobby's. However, looking at the corporal's complete history pretty effectively negates this excuse.**

**(b) Technically as a sergeant she was only allowed to go up to expression 2b, Honest Doubt, but since she was using 4 (eyeballing) on an inanimate object Vimes graciously decided to ignore for the transgression.**

---

Lady Louisa was taking advantage of Madam's absence to close the shade on her window.

It was an innocuous enough movement. The only effect it had was to stop the nice, hot wind from entering her bedroom. Stuffiness was really a small price to pay.

Inside, it was quite dim. The room was reduced to a series of criss-crossing gray shadows.

One of the darker ones solidified into the shape of a tall, thin man and stepped towards her.

"My lord," she said calmly, without turning to face him.

"Louisa," said the shadow's voice, in honeyed tones, "my dear, you have made an absolute botch of the whole thing."

"Really," said Louisa. "How so?"

"Alerting the _Watch?_"

"I thought you were confident of your plan?"

"Of course I was. But the Watch is dangerous."

"Oh, come now! A rag-tag bunch of fools and misfits, incompetent -"

"In Pseudopolis, quite so. In Ankh-Morpork, only the former can be even stretched to apply."

"Madam would have gone if I had not."

"I doubt it. She does not like publicity."

"Yes, but she's curious about that man, Vimes. I saw her looking at him." A hint of a whine was starting to enter the young woman's tone.

"Indeed you did, dearest," said the voice, more soothing, now, presumably for fear of a tantrum. "And it was well observed. But she might not have alerted them to her personal mystery. In any case, we must deal as best we can, now."

She looked at the dark figure. "Do you really think we must worry about the _Watch_?"

"Do a little research, love, and I am sure you will agree."

"If you tell me so, my lord, I will, of course, believe you."

"As it should be."

He touched her cheek. She closed her eyes and lifted her face slightly, but after a moment he let go and seemed, curiously, to fade into the background like that famous type of cat, leaving behind only the glint in his eye and the queerly white glow of his grin.

"Farewell, for now," he said, in soulful tones, and disappeared completely.

Death, who was watching from the shadows, where he had paused in the act of ushering the shade of a lurking, and now even more poisonous, cockroach into the next world, shook his head.

DRAMA, he intoned. Then a thought seemed to strike him and he began to give off an air of frowning, insofar as it is possible for a skull to frown.

WHAT, HIM _AGAIN?_ he said to no one in particular, and disappeared in what appeared to be something of a hurry._  
_

_---_

"Well, that was helpful," growled Vimes, eyeing the back of the coach balefully as it rolled away from them.

"It does mean you were justified in setting the gargoyles on them, sir," murmured Angua.

"Ha! Not as if they're going to find anything. These are _politicians _we're dealing with here."

"Er... sir?" said Carrot, who had been politely waiting for them to finish. "Cheery's gone, sir."

"I kind of figured, what with all that 'soft people' talk. What's gotten into her?"

"I don't know, Mister Vimes. But..."

"But what? Speak up!"

"I found something in her lab, sir. I think it might be a Clue."

"Oh, _no,_" said Vimes. "Like we haven't got enough on our hands already!"

"I know, sir. If you'll just come look at it? And, er, you should probably come too, Angua..."

It had been a beaker, by the looks of it, but what it was now was a serious hazard to anyone walking around barefoot(a). Shards of glass were scattered liberally across the rough wooden floor, and there was a large stain, similar - or so it seemed to Vimes, who admittedly had something of a one track mind - to that in the coach, if on a rather bigger scale.

"Sergeant?"

She looked pale, and Vimes added hastily, "Ifyouneedtodon'thesitatetostepoutside-", but she shook her head and smiled weakly. "I'll be fine, I think. It was... fresh in your office, but this has faded, obviously."

"There's too much to be accounted for by what she scraped up off the remains of your desk," she started.

"That would be the dart some bastard shot at me," said Vimes, helpfully. "Did no one mention that to you? There was lots of exciting things happening that night, really."

"Oh. That would explain it, then. All the same smell, anyway."

"Huh," muttered the Commander. "Then -"

"Perhaps Sergeant Angua here should get some fresh air now, sir, if you don't need her," said Carrot tactfully.

"What? Oh. Right. Yes. Go on, Angua. Huh," he said again, and was promptly lost to the world.

Angua looked at Carrot. Carrot looked back. They both, being policemen and, significantly, policemen trained by Vimes, were able to keep straight faces, but it was a close thing.

**(a) It was, in fact, a sharp retort, something the Chief Butt of the Fools' Guild might have felt slightly better to know, once he stopped dribbling.**

---

Sam Vimes set off for home at five twenty, leaving himself a rather wide margin before the clocks of the city struck six and he would need to be in Young Sam's bedroom, story book in hand. He stopped on the way at Cable Street, home base of the Cable Street Particulars.

He'd always felt a little bit uneasy, reviving a secret police force, probably more uneasy than Carrot, although he didn't show it. He, after all, could remember the _other _Cable Street force; the one that inspired hushed whispers behind cupped hands in pubs, and was only secret in the sense that it could move almost anywhere without official reprimand. But the concept behind it was a necessary one. He made sure to keep it tightly regulated, though.

Just in case. Because maybe the spirit of the past could... seep through, twist things, corrupt them, though he should have thought that burning the place down would have purged its memory, there were always ashes.

Coppers are just as superstitious as other people, only more so.

He tried to put those sorts of thoughts aside, though, when dealing with the actual people of Cable Street.

"Evening, Andre," he said as the door swung closed behind him. The blond young man started in his seat, where he had (understandably) been dozing. The Cable Street Watch House didn't get much business during daylight hours, after all.

"Oh, hello, Mister Vimes. Didn't see you there. Er... what do you need?" the Special Constable said hurriedly, sitting up slightly and trying to look busy.

"No rush," said Vimes pleasantly, because causing pain and discomfort unto the deserving was one of life's little pleasures. "How's Christine doing?"

"Very well, sir, except for her tendency to occasionally burst into song while washing dishes."

"You have amazing reserves of patience, man."

"She's not that bad, sir," said Andre, looking hurt.

"No, no, of course not." He waited.

"Uh... _was _there something I can do for you, sir?"

"In fact there is something you can do for me. Have a search done through all your files for notable alchemists or people in similar areas of work who might possibly have a motive for... I don't know... any sort of crime, I suppose."

The other man blinked. "Alchemists?"

"Yep."

"But - alchemists, sir? I mean -"

"Take my word for it, lad."

"Yes, sir."

"Good man. And now I must be off. My best wishes toward..." he groped for a moment "...right, Christine, and your hopeful relief from her musical affliction."

Andre opened his mouth, then gave up. Vimes was already gone.

The Watch Commander went home in a pensive mood, his feet leading the way**(a)** over the familiar cobblestones. The sun had set by the time he arrived at the Scoone Avenue manor with ten minutes to go, and the sky was the pale grey-blue of twilight. Willikins, when he obligingly opened the door, thought that the man seemed surprisingly amiable, considering the events of the day.

This changed fairly quickly, however, when just as he was about to step inside someone shot him. Twice. One missed, and skittered away down the gravel path, unnoticed, but the second found its mark, or at least found a mark.

"Ow!" he yelled, and clutched his side.

"Your Grace?" said the butler, clearly alarmed.

But Vimes was staring at the calm, silent street. Gingerly, he raised the dart he had just pulled out of his side to his face and gazed at it.

It was bloody, and looked incredibly evil. What held his attention, however, was the syringe attached to one end.

"Should sir perhaps come inside?" said Willikins, after a moment.

"Good idea," said Vimes, vaguely. "Good man. Genius."

He stepped inside. Willikins shut the door firmly.

"Would sir be wanting a bandage?" he said to Vimes, who was prodding the tiny hole curiously. One finger was already being stained red.

"I suppose sir does."

Willikins evaporated.

"That seems," said Vimes, to the empty corridor, "to be the first shoe dropped. Or possibly the third. The last? What do _you _think, boys and girls..."

He was right about the latter, as it happened.

**(a) This sounds like it ought to be the reasonably common way of things, but it is not, in fact true. Many people, at least on the Ankh side of the river, walk chest first. Seamstresses tend to use their hips first and foremost, other body parts as a last resort. Alchemists, on the other hand, often appear to be leading with their heads, because of the way they spend most of their time hunched over, hands shielding their fragile skulls.**

**One cannot, upon reflection, really blame them.**


	7. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

_In which the madness of Watchmen takes many forms and a heart-warming aunt-nephew scene of happy familial love takes place_

On the evening of December 26th, Captain Carrot of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch discovered that said Watch had a sudden deficiency of dwarf officers.

"Angua," he murmured to the werewolf sergeant standing at his shoulder, who looked as puzzled as he did, "do you know where Grabthroat and Hackknee have gone?"

"No, I don't. Look, Stronginthearm and Stronginthearm**(a)** have disappeared too."

"And Oakenshield**(b)**. In fact I don't think there's a single dwarf in the building. Besides me, obviously."

"Obviously," said Angua, with a dryness that her partner in Er umness**(c)** completely failed to notice.

"Detritus?" said Carrot to the sergeant, who was currently trolling the desk in a manner so completely friendly and hospitable it was a mystery to all concerned why the queue of complaining citizens had suddenly disintegrated.

"Yessir?"

"Have you seen any of the dwarf officers recently?"

"Come to fink of it, sir, no."

"Do you know where they went?"

"They was all in a huddle an hour or so ago, I know that."

"Did you see them after that?"

"Yessir. They was all heading toward the door."

"I see," said Carrot calmly. "Thank you, Detritus."

He looked at Angua and mouthed _Cheery. _She nodded.

"Perhaps it's time to go and see what's happening," said Carrot, evenly. "Detritus, just... just keep order while we're gone, will you?"

"Yessir."

They went.

**(a) Stronginthearm is one of the most common dwarf surnames currently in circulation, rarer only than the well-known Glodssonssonsson (rinse and repeat as necessary).**

**(b) Meanwhile, in the Roundworld, the tectonic plate on which the United Kingdom rests shifts slightly as Tolkien hissownself does barrel rolls in the grave...**

**(c) Closely related, as these things can be defined, to 'hem hem'-ocity and 'Is there someone in there with you, Capt-I see, yes, I'll just be going now, thanks so very much"-itality.**

**---**

Sybil came down soon after the yelling started.

"For goodness sakes, Sam, I really don't think -" she began, and then stopped as the entrance hall came into view.

Willikins, who was, at heart, a butler, was nevertheless pressed very firmly in an attempt to stay out of the way of the ballistic Vimes. He looked positively unnerved, a sure sign that something was so incredibly amiss it was coming back in the other direction and was about to hit him on the head. Or possibly already had.

Sam himself was standing at the center of the hall. Standing wasn't really the word. He was stirring up a cloud of dust**(a)**, and appeared to be fighting himself. Sybil wasn't sure how, but there was definitely tussling going on and who else, after all, could he be fighting?

He also, it dawned on her, appeared to be foaming at the mouth.

"Er... Willikins?"

"Yes'm?" said the butler, in strained tones.

"Could you send a clacks to Captain Carrot and ask him to come over? I think we may need some... assistance."

"He's standing between me and the door, ma'am," said Willikins, reasonably.

"I can see that. Perhaps... oh, yes." She carefully went to the living room, where a Dis-Organizer was resting on the coffee table, and opened it.

"Hello, Lady Sybil Ramkin! How can I help-"

"You do a special clacks service, yes?"

"Oh, yes, Lady Sybil Ramk-"

"This is the message. To: Captain Carrot. Sender: Sybil Ramkin. Sam has gone - appears to have gone," she added conscientiously, "absolutely mad. Any help appreciated."

"Er," began the imp, nervously, "You have to say Message: before saying the message..."

Sybil decided that there were occasions when politeness simply did not pay off. "Imp," she said, "if you don't do it _now_, I'll give you to Sam as his personal Dis-Organizer!"

It was gone so fast she barely saw the blur.

"Right," she said firmly, and then went back to see what she could do until Sam recovered some semblance of sanity.

**(a) Something that ought to have been impossible, according to the laws of physics, since Purity had mopped and dusted and so forth barely half an hour ago, but certain conventions are stronger than mere physics, and one of them is the Cloud Of Dust With Random Limbs And Swearwords Peeking Out in a traditionally comic representation of a fight scene.**

**---**

In a tunnel that had only recently been abandoned by a certain group of deep-down grags...

"_Gr'duzk, d'hrak!_**(a)**" shouted a dark, clinking figure, who was standing on a small footstool which fortunately was all that was necessary to bring it up by a head above the rest of the teeming mass of dwarves, who watched it with rapt attention.

It went on, speaking in a curious mixture of Morporkian, Dwarfish, and deep-down Dwarfish. For the audience, it was not so much about the meaning of the words as the flow and the emotion behind them, because words, for dwarfs, define the world. It was demagoguery at its finest.

In their midst, Captain Carrot crept through the crowd in an extraordinarily conspicuous fashion. It was a mark of how enthralled his fellows were that no one noticed him. Behind him, a handsome golden wolf padded, unnoticed despite the crush of the throng.

When they were at the front of the growing mob, Carrot whispered, "Is that Cheery?"

The wolf next to him managed a passable nod.

"D-mn!**(b)**" he said. "Is there anything... different about her scent?"

The wolf hesitated and lifted its long nose, snuffling quietly to herself. Her lips peeled back over its teeth into something approaching a visual growl. She took a shuddering breath and jerked her head, more loosely this time.

"What?"

Angua gave him a look that radiated sarcasm, even with added lupine features.

"All right, tell me later." He stared at the short figure. "She's... not acting right."

Tongue out, ears flattened back, mouth stretched into a doggy grin, a general _No shit, Havelock_**(c)**expression.

"Not just what she's doing," said Carrot, impatiently. "Of course there's that. But the way she moves, speaks... It's all wrong."

The wolf looked as thoughtful as wolfishly possible.

Carrot listened. She watched him carefully, based on a hunch.

When his expression started to melt into one of absolute belief, and the curiosity in his eyes faded, to be replaced by fanatical fervency, Angua bit him in the arse.

**(a) Lit. "Lend me your ears, friends, Morporkians, countrydwarves." Usually translated as "Hey you!"**

**(b) A linguistic feat possibly only achievable by a human with all the human capacity for softer consonants, brought up as a dwarf and thus with all the dwarfish talent for putting in unexpected punctuation in the middle of words where lazier races would put a vowel.**

**(c) Not actually referring to the current Patrician of Ankh-Morpork in any way. Havelock Solmes was a Morporkian private detective in the 1800's, renowned for his general talent for stating the incredibly obvious, subsequently making incredibly unbelievable inferences based off his 'observations', and never actually managing to solve a single case, except for one, commonly known as the Study in Vermillion, the criminal of which he finally caught by accident two months later while visiting the barber.**

**---**

A different Havelock was carefully writing a memo on the advisability of sending certain only mildly misleading clacks to Lady Margolotta von Uberwald when the door burst open.

It was the first time in the last five years that someone had charged into his office without him telling them to first, as far as he could recall, and he was fairly sure it was the first time in a much longer period that they'd done it without knocking. Typically, the last time it had been Vimes.

This time it was Madam.

"Yes?" he said composedly, looking up at the purple-clad invader. "Was there something you needed, Madam? I'm afraid I'm rather busy at the moment, though of course I am always glad to entertain my loving aunt."

She smiled. "I'm afraid whatever you are busy with must wait."

"Really? Do sit down, by the way," he added pointedly as she lowered herself into a chair.

"Thank you, Havelock," she said, cheerfully ignoring his tone.

"You are, of course, permanently welcome."

"Good, because I may be here for some time." She smiled at him.

"To what end?"

"Getting certain questions answered."

"I am unaware of any -"

"Havelock," she said, by way of warning. "You can either tell me what the truth about Vimes is or you can tell me what you know about Louisa."

"And if I do not?"

"You would deny your poor old aunt the satisfaction of knowing the truth before she croaks?"

"Hardly fair, Madam. You have many full years of life left, I hope."

"Not if you set an assassin on me by tomorrow."

He covered his mouth, presumably to hide a smile. "Well, yes. I wasn't actually planning to, you know."

"Really?" she says, half-way to genuinely surprised. "I'm amazed. Is not all this prying irritating you?"

"Not enough to become violent over it. That would be entirely unnecessary."

"Tsk, Havelock, have I taught you nothing? You know me, after all."

"Indeed I do, Madam." He leaned back in his seat and looked at her over steepled fingers. "One would think that would be incentive _not_to kill you. Or so they tell me."

"Oh, I don't know. It would be traditional, after all."

"Would it?"

"Royalty and so on, I mean."

"Ah. I see. Though I am most certainly not a king. I do not believe, in any case, that in this situation such drastic measures are necessary."

"Perhaps," she said, more quietly. "But what measures _are_ necessary?"

"Pardon?"

"Was there a reason you introduced me to His Grace, Havelock?"

He must have been practicing, she thought, when she saw his extraordinarily innocent expression. There was no other way that kind of look of naiivity could be obtained by ordinary mortals.

"What possible reason could there have been?" he said, his voice dripping the strawberry daiquiri that is the sound of blamelessness.

"I don't know, I'm sure. That's why I am asking you."

"I see. And, remind me again - why do you expect me to answer you? You know me as well as I know you, do you not?"

Not bloody likely, thought Madam, although genteelly. No one knew Havelock well. Havelock probably didn't know Havelock well. It was a good enough thing in a Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, but it was annoying at times like this.

Worse, she had to admit there was no reason for him to answer her. The King of Psuedopolis wasn't fool enough to try to wage war on Ankh-Morpork, even if she did use one of her Strong Suggestions. She couldn't threaten him with anything, and there was even less to bribe him with.

But...

She paused, then said brightly, "I suppose I don't expect any such thing. I really ought to know better by now."

Havelock waited, an expression of amiable disbelief firmly plastered on his sharp features.

"It was a passing fancy, no doubt. I should turn all my attention to this terrible deception Louisa and Jamie seem to be playing at."

His expression changed, very slightly. It would have been almost unnoticeable to anyone who hadn't known him for the last forty years or so. She congratulated herself silently.

"I will not intrude further on your time..."

"One moment, I think, will not do any more harm." His face was perfectly blank, always a sign of internal conflict in her nephew. Eventually, he said calmly,

"Perhaps you should... direct your inquires towards one Dr. Lawn. I believe he can usually be found at the Lady Sybil Free Hospital."

"Why, thank you, Havelock," said Madam, with a brilliant smile. "You are too kind."

He looked at her for a long minute and then smiled back. "Quite. And now... do not let me detain you..."

She swept out, triumphant.

Once he was confident he was alone, the smile widened into a positive grin. "Quite," he murmured to himself.

Drumknott came in silently, but Vetinari, who had good reflexes, was already wearing his official faces. "Sorry, my lord, but she completely ignored me and I did not like to call the guards, as she is your aunt..."

Vetinari waved a languid white hand. "Do not concern yourself over it, Drumknott. What else has happened?"

"A message from Clerk Brian, mylord."

"And?"

"Your surmise appears to have been correct, my lord. Vimes has been acting most strangely."

"How unfortunate. Please convey my best wishes to Lady Sybil."

"Yes, sir."

"Where is Captain Carrot?"

"In the Treacle Mine Road tunnel, I believe."

"Tell him I would like to see him immediately, as his commanding officer has been incapacitated."

"Yes, my lord."

---

In fact Captain Carrot and Sergeant Angua were now outside the Treacle Mine Road tunnel. Carrot was sitting on the steps (gingerly) leading up to the building while Angua went behind a convenient cart and Changed. At one point he handed her a shirt and breeches.

After a moment, she came out.

He looked at her expectantly.

"She smells mad," said Angua, succinctly. "Absolutely fucking bonkers. Not in a good way."

"...I see," said Carrot, slowly. "Er. Well then."

"What was she saying? The Dwarfish was too fast for me."

Carrot appeared to be thinking.

"She was talking about... what it is, to be a dwarf."

Angua blinked. "Like Hamcrusher, you mean?"

"No. Not at all. She wasn't talking about killing trolls, or wearing clang, or hatred of the dwarves in the sunlight."

"Then what was she talking about?"

"She was talking about the darkness. About the love that blooms when you hold true iron. About the knowledge of belonging, of being part of the earth from which you came..."

Angua touched his arm, gently. He shook himself, and nodded.

"You're right. Completely mad."

"It does seem unlike her. The speech itself wasn't harmful, then?"

He hesitated. "I don't know. It made a thousand dwarves dream of returning to the mountains where they were forged. Is that harmful?"

"Economically speaking, yes. And what other manner of speaking is there, in Ankh-Morpork?"

"You're right. And they weren't Cheery's words, were they."

"Doesn't seem like it."

They stood in silence for several minutes.

Angua noticed the blinking semaphore first, and prodded him. "Clacks from Pseudopolis Yard."

"What? Oh." His lips moved for a while in silent calculation. "V... E... T... I... N... A... R... I - His lordship... wants... to... see... Captain - me... _now_..."


	8. Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

_In which a turnip a day fails to keep the doctor away and Madam interrogates anyone unlucky enough to be nearby _

Madam left the Palace with what those who knew her would recognize as an extremely smug expression on her face. That is to say, the casual observer might have noticed the barest hint of a smirk around the curl of the corner of her mouth.

She stepped smartly into the coach and told the driver to take her to the Lady Sybil Free Hospital. The name itself was promising, she thought, as the coach jolted along. Clearly this Dr. Lawn had been connected to Vimes in some way if he'd named the hospital after the man's wife. A childhood friend, perhaps? In any case, it didn't seem like Havelock had sent her on an entirely wild goose chase, since, at the very least, her own sources had informed her that both hospital and doctor existed.

And she hadn't promised not to turn her other attentions to Louisa, which was just as well, since she found breaking her word distasteful, although she did it often enough. Especially with family. After all, Madam thought of herself as a sweet, loyal, loving aunt who only manipulated the rest of the world out of a genuine desire to do good. That is certainly what she would have told anyone who asked.

Unless it was more convenient to tell them something else, obviously.

It was a short ride, but the sky had darkened from the dark slate of twilight to an impenetrable sort of darkness, tinged with orange where the clouds reflected the city lights back down to the ground, and looked faintly sinister. She ignored it. Ankh-Morpork was probably the least psychotropic landscape on the Disc.

The hospital was a sensible, square sort of building on the corner of the block, with a large sign in front embossed with the name of the institution. She regarded it for several moments before entering.

Striding through the front room with more aplomb than a Lipwig on a warpath, she quickly located Lawn's office and knocked, politely.

The door opened, and she caught a glimpse of a thin, intelligent face belonging to a man who looked to be about her age, though he didn't carry it as well as she did, before her attention was drawn irresistibly to what appeared to be the world's largest syringe. It was loaded with some clear, greenish, slightly sticky looking liquid.

He stepped to the side and nodded to her. "Good evening. Is there something I can do for you?"

"Why, yes," said Madam, stepping inside and offering him a charming smile. "I am Lady Roberta Meserole, Doctor, and I was hoping -"

She was interrupted at that moment, however, by a second set of footsteps approaching

History likes neatness. It believes, at some level, that neatness really gives it credibility as a holistic concept and makes it more acceptable, even respectable, in the eyes of its customers (i.e., historians). This is probably a result of all the noise it hears made over those happy coincidences that led, for instance, to the downfall of the S'ang dynasty**(a).**

It may be just looking for attention, really.

Whatever the reason, Lady Sybil herself was the owner of the footsteps. She greeted them brightly, did an almost unnoticeable double-take when she recognized Madam, and asked in a slightly brittle voice whether Dr. Lawn would be so kind as to come to Pseudopolis Yard?

The good doctor frowned and nodded. "If you'll excuse me, Lady Meserole..."

"I will wait, of course."

Lady Sybil looked at her curiously for a moment, but did not seem inclined to argue differently. She turned on one heel and headed off, taking it very much for granted that he would follow. To be fair, he did actually do so at once, but it still revealed something of the Lady Vimes' basic character to Madam's discerning eye. It wasn't surprising. She was a Ramkin, after all, and Madam knew something of the history of the family, which was, true, mostly to its credit, but notable for its production of... ah... call them natural leaders.

Yes.

She looked around the office without much interest. It was a small, neat room not much molded by its owner's personality; if anything, it suggested a lack thereof. Pity, she liked to get a feel for a person's character before meeting them, and she eventually decided to take a brief, unscheduled tour of the rest of the hospital, in the hopes of more useful information.

He'd taken the syringe with him, she observed before leaving, but she thought nothing of it at the time.

**(a) The Seventh Dynasty of the Agatean empire, usually remembered for its completely child-appropriate limericks. The most famous starts like this: There was an empress from HungHung...**

---

Igor was having difficulties.

Igors, on the whole, aren't natural psychologists. They don't hold with all that fuzzy, "talk about it" perspective. In their view, if it can't be solved by lightning and, in drastic cases, transplants, it's not worth solving at all.

This view did not appear to be approved of, however, by the various more squeamish officers who were in charge. Igor had protested that Vimes would have been perfectly alright by now if he'd just been allowed to try out a new, very popular technique introduced by his cousin, Igor, with assistance from his cousin, Igor, which was already yielding high success rates and earning them lots of accolades and plenty of money to put rubber gloves**(a)** on the table. It involved, admittedly, a turnip, but that was Progrethth for you.

Captain Carrot and Lady Sybil, however, had been polite but firm. No brain transfers, no lightning, and certainly no turnips. He'd tried sulking about it, but no one had noticed the difference between his petulant expression and his smile, so he'd given it up, in a blacker mood than before.

To be precise, he corrected himself, conscientiously, in a state of higher adrenaline than before caused by negative electric impulses in the limbic system...

And now they'd brought an _Ankh-Morpork doctor _in.

Dr. Lawn was also less than happy about the situation. He was not a stupid man. He was perfectly aware that Commander Not-Keel, while suitably grateful for his services to the family and also for his continued lack of questions or commentary, would be less than happy to know who exactly was supposed to be curing him, because he was a Watchman and naturally suspicious.

And there was the other thing, which was currently resting in his briefcase. He gripped the handle of his bag a little tighter.

Vimes was sitting on the slab. He appeared to have calmed down considerably from the state of agitation Lady Sybil had described, and was staring blankly at the wall with an expression of blissful unawareness of the rest of the world. Lawn waved a hand in front of his face, by way of experiment.

Not even a flicker. Hmm.

He turned to the young man who even he recognized as Captain Carrot. "Are you sure Constable Igor hasn't done anything yet?"

He'd tried to keep any accusation out of his tone, although some must have crept in from the way the man looked at him, with sincere concern on his face. Well, it wasn't his fault. There was an Igor working in the Lady Sybil Free Hospital's basement, after all, and that was all that needed to be said to anyone who had previously encountered an Igor.

Wonderful people, of course, but... singleminded sorts.

Metaphorically speaking.

"No, sir. Igor would never do such a thing without permission, I'm sure."

You_are_, aren't you thought Lawn. He kept his thoughts to himself and shrugged instead of speaking.

"Do you need anything, Dr. Lawn?"

Mossy couldn't remember if he'd told Carrot his name yet. Oh well. No doubt Lady Sybil had mentioned it.

"Not yet. I'll just... have a look first..."

"Call me if you need anything," said Carrot, with perfect seriousness, and withdrew to the room where Vimes' wife was, Lawn was sure, waiting in a reasonably composed manner.

Since he was, for all intents and purposes, alone**(b)**, he opened his case and prodded the syringe for a moment. The greenish stuff inside slid about too slowly for a normal liquid.

He shook his head and turned back to the Commander.

There wasn't much to go off of. He took the man's pulse, peered at the inside of his ears with the funny little Makes-A-Bright-Light-And-Reflects-Things-At-Hard-To-See-Angles device, a genuine da Quirm his Head of Nursing Staff had made what he considered to be a rather _pointed _gift of last Hogswatch, and tried to communicated a few times. He prodded him in various enlightened and scientifically accepted ways. Vimes, who seemed to be practically comatose, didn't so much as blink.

Lawn tried a series of trigger words. Sybil. Sam. Young Sam. Vimes. Even, after a while, Keel.

Nothing.

"City? Ankh-Morpork?" he said, wearily.

A twitch, maybe. It was so fast that it was hard for even an experienced doctor to tell whether it had been there at all. More encouraging than anything else in the last half hour, though.

"World? Disc?"

Again, the faintest of flinches.

"...planet? Er..." he tried to think, then stopped, because it clearly wasn't working, and decided instead to just scale up "...er... Universe?"

Pause, then:

Vimes screamed, in a blood curdling fashion.

Once Dr. Lawn and his hemoglobin had both recovered, he discovered that Vimes had returned to his previous inanimate state.

A careful observer might have noticed that the air around Lawn's ear was turning blue. This was because the swear words he was refraining from uttering were escaping through other outlets.

**(a) Although his cousin Igor was getting some funny ideas about weight loss, and was now arguing that rubber gloves were fatty and cholesterol-inducing. He was now subsisting on a supplementary diet of erasers. Constable Igor didn't see the logic of it, modern though he was; what was the point of dieting when you had all the tools for a liposuction ready at hand?**

**(b) Vimes didn't count. _He _was clearly on another plane of existence entirely.**

**---**

Madam was genuinely impressed. The nursing staff had completely failed to respond to her "I know _exactly _what I am doing here, and that is the only thing that matters in any way shape or form whatsoever" look, but had instead tried to get her to donate with any means possible up to and including physical threats.

You had to admire them.

Admiration, however, did not stop her from making some suitably pointed comments about the quality of the serviced in 'This Place'**(a) **and issuing a few only barely more subtle threats concerning law suits and financial crises.

Nurse de Iceberg**(b)**had promptly seen her Threats of Financial Crises and raised her a Threat of Public Scandal, when the much-tried doctor had arrived on the scene, looking resigned, and broken up the small skirmish, to the disappointment of the watching janitors.

"You are a brave woman," he said, deadpan, before quickly putting on what, if she were to hazard a guess, was probably his official face. "Although of course I will not hear a word said against the nurses, wonderful women to the one. What was it you needed?"

"Could we speak in your office?" said Madam.

"I suppose so, yes."

They walked in rather heavy silence. Dr. Lawn looked at her curiously from time to time.

Once they were in the office and the door had closed behind them, Madam said quietly,

"To tell you the truth, Dr. Lawn, I did not come here to discuss anything particularly medical."

"Oh?" said the doctor, looking somewhat distracted. "What is it, then?"

"I was wondering what you could tell me about Commander Vimes."

There was a silence that went on for slightly too long. Thank you, Havelock, thought Madam.

"Commander of the Watch? Duke of Ankh? I helped deliver his son," said the doctor, carefully. He sat down with exaggerated carelessness. "Why do you ask?"

"I was directed here by the other people I have made enquiries with."

Now that was an excellent phrase, she thought, satisfied, keeping an eye on his expression. It was just as well she'd had a chance to practice her threats on Nurse de Iceberg.

"I see," he said, after another awkward silence. "What was it you wanted to know, exactly?"

"Oh, I don't know. Whatever seems relevant."

He made no comment on this blatantly dishonest sentiment.

She decided to try a different tack. "I wonder, Dr. Lawn, if you remember the Glorious 25th of May?"

He reached for a pen, and looked up with a perfectly crafted blank face. Madam was once more mildly impressed. She supposed she should have expected it. If he hadn't been practiced in keeping things a secret, there was no way the details of the... mystery would have remained suppressed up to this day.

She was perfectly content that it should remain that way, in general terms. In specific ones, however...

"Yes," he said calmly. "I most certainly do."

"Really? What do you remember?"

"Your Ladyship..."

"Please call me Madam."

He seemed to deliberate for a moment, before coming to some sort of conclusion.

"I was a doctor then, as now - Madam. I was being... ah... _paid _for my services to the rebels. I have some fairly vivid memories."

"Goodness," said Madam. "How exciting. Did you know... what was his name... that Sergeant..."

He gave her an incredulous look. "John Keel?"

"Yes, that was it."

"He rented a room from me, for about three days. Before the Revolution." He was speaking more sharply now, and she made a note to tread carefully here. It was a sore subject for her, too, but she was better at hiding it. She had years of practice. But this was extremely promising.

"Oh? I know he was one of the ringleaders..."

"_The _ringleader, Madam."

"Quite so."

"Did you know him, too?" The question was fast, out and hanging in the air before either of them could think. The expression in the doctor's eyes was that of very sincere dismay.

On the other hand, sometimes honesty was the easiest way. And, more relevantly, the best one.

"I met him. Once," she said shortly.

Lawn was the one waiting this time.

"And I was wondering, because although I've never met His Grace before, he was... most familiar. Please be frank, Dr. Lawn. What exactly do you know about... them?"

"Who _are _you?"

"I am many things, Dr. Lawn. Havelock's aunt, among others."

It took him a moment to work this out, but when he did Madam was rewarded with a blink.

"The Patrician?"

"That is the Havelock to which I refer, yes. Now will you tell me, sir?"

He looked at her for a full minute, and then he told her.

**(a) Madam had a talent for injecting all the scorn, disgust and pity that comes with the words "What a nice job you've done on this hovel. All things considered, I mean" into any given phrase as it became convenient for her. She'd once achieved the same effect with the words 'And this is your palace?' Doing it to the innocent phrase 'this place' was the work of a moment.**

**(b) By a curious coincidence, the nickname Madam gave to that formidable lady was almost identical to the description used by Postmaster General Moist von Lipwig. In fact it was, through some strange twist of fate, the only name(c) the woman was ever referred by by any enterprising patient or relative thereof; her real name was never discovered by anyone at the hospital, that was for sure. Dr. Lawn, who was technically her boss, called her "You" or, more often, "Er... Quick! Look over there!"**

**(c) With slight variations, naturally. Examples include: Iceberg-woman, Ship-killer, and She-Who-Floats-Innocently-Through-Major-Shipping-Lanes.**


	9. Chapter Nine

**Chapter Nine**

_In which several independent yet equally concerned parties contemplate possibly illegal substances and the Watch sees green_

Dr. Lawn sat in his chair, staring at the wall for some time after Madam had left.

He hadn't told her _everything_, of course. Not his own, personal observations and speculations. Just the... ha... facts. Keel - Vimes probably wouldn't differentiate, but then, at the moment the man probably wouldn't do much besides stare.

He picked up the syringe and spun it, idly, between thin, agile fingers. The potion it contained looked innocent enough, at a glance. But no one ever would have given it just a casual glance. No one, in Dr. Lawn's scientific opinion,_ could _have given it just a casual glance. It seemed to draw the eye towards it, no matter how well concealed it was.

Not the ideal illegal substance, he thought wryly.

And a closer look revealed its strangeness. It was... hard to define. A faint sense of wrongness hung about it. You could say that the jarring effect was just an optical illusion, just a momentary, apparently impossible image caused by logically explicable things like the pattern of shadows and light and the viscousity of the liquid making it slide smoothly across the glass just a little slower than the mind's eye expected it to.

Each of these things was true, but Dr. Lawn, who had stared at it, as far as he knew, longer than anyone else, was pretty damn sure that those solid facts weren't all that was true about the stuff.

He had received the liquid through a most unfortunate series of events that afternoon.

It had started when The Nurse**(a) **threw open his door (irrevocably reshaping the frame by virtue of sheer righteous indignation) and announced that he was needed in Psychotherapeutic Ward A im_mediately_. He had, of course, trailed after her, doing his best not to think longingly of the brief nap he had been enjoying in his nice, comfy chair and conveniently placed copy of the Times, and obediently taken a look at the patient she had directed his gaze to.

Up to that point, it was a fairly normal sequence.

Past that point, things had started to go bad**(c)**.

The man lying on the sterilized white hospital bed had been rough and coarse looking, with a heavy sort of build. He looked to be about forty, with that dark coloring of skin that suggested poverty and hardship. Supporting this theory were the tattered remains of a rather shabby black suit, the sort of thing a gentleman's driver might wear on business, which still clung to his bony limbs.

There was some blood drying on his chest, too. And of course the flask full to the brim of greenish liquid clutched in one hand had added another degree of strangeness to the whole scenario.

Doctors are, in essence, just scientists more concerned with the squishier ends than means, and sometimes there's not even that much differentiation, and it was in the spirit of scientific curiosity that he'd had the liquid carefully transfered into a sterile syringe. The lesions on the lad's chest were found to be quite shallow, and already healing, so he felt justified in turning his attentions to what the boy had been carrying as opposed to the boy himself.

He was starting to regret his decision.

**(a) Dr. Lawn, despite appearances, was not free from the icebergitous trend. He, however, unique among those who had named her as such, felt slightly guilty whenever the thought inadvertently crossed his mind, and did his best, when he remembered, to refer to her by marginally politer names. After trying several variations on a more respectable and less offensive theme(b), he had eventually settled on the Nurse for simplicity and very nearly always remembered to think of her as such.**

**Honestly. **

** (b) That Woman Who No Doubt Has Many Wonderful Qualities, The Charming Chocolate Lover, and so forth.**

**(c) Fine, worse. It was a hospital, after all, with all the accompanying quirky charm, a term that, after some deliberation, Lawn had finally concluded meant 'insane hours, constant, ear-drum blowing sounds of construction, and mad nurses'. He'd felt especially guilty when he thought it, though, which must have counted for something. **

**---**

The sun rose.

And lo, a sea of golden light did flow over the Disc, just like two and a fourth cups of butter that have been microwaved for a full minute, illuminating the world anew wherever it kissed the dark, sleeping land below, in what if Einstein is right was a vaguely incestuous manner, and generally just making everyone's day that much brighter. Literally.

But even that magic-infused sea of brilliance hesitated when faced with the smear on the face of the Disc that was Ankh-Morpork. It seemed to say: We didn't bargain for this. When did we agree to look at this dump? Who knows what they'll do with us? Probably ask stupid questions. Like... the oncoming wave gave the slightest of shudders... _what color_?

And it's yellow, obviously**(a)**, it seemed to add, so there's no need to look at us that way.

Eventually, though, spurred on by that shoddy set of rough guidelines that passed for physics on that equally patchily defined planet, the sun turned its noble face toward the twin city.

One of the first things the light touched was the north window of the Pseudopolis embassy to Ankh-Morpork. Behind the glass, Madam smiled an incredibly scary smile.

She'd returned to the embassy last night, filled all throughout the coach ride with the warm, glowing feeling of... ah... persuasion well done, but that feeling was fading along with the night, to be replaced with the customary anticipation of plotting.

Lawn had not been quite as enlightening as she'd hoped, though she was fairly sure he'd told her everything he knew of it. He had at least confirmed that they were the same man, and not just connected in some vague and mysterious way, and he'd told her, too, of second-hand reports he had received that testified of a pair of orange-bedecked monks who had hung around for a while, looking mystical, occasionally hitting each other on the head with the broom, presumably some sort of holy ritual, and whispering an awful lot.

Madam didn't see how that could possibly be relevant, however.

So it was time to turn her attentions to a different mystery, until a new lead popped up on the first. And clearly Havelock's advice hadn't been extremely helpful, so no inconvenient guilt, either.

She dressed**(b) **carefully, took care of her toilette, and descended to the main hall of the embassy, where she spent a few tasteful moments admiring the effect of the rosy glow dawn cast over the cold stone room.

After exactly five seconds of scenery-appreciation had been completed, she promptly turned her thoughts to more practical things.

First, it was time to use some of her special techniques on that coachman, because while she had no doubt that the Watch was efficient, she had... special skills, did she not?

Moments later she was in the stables. As per her expectations, the ancient hostler was up and about, although a better and more accurate term might be 'marginally more vertical than previously and making small, involuntary twitching motions that could, with generosity and the vision of a blind-folded man, be interpreted as an attempt at completing his daily duties'.

"Ah, Wells," she said, gently so as not to kill him via cardiac arrest. "Do you know where Harris is?"

"Dun't know, ma'am," the old man rasped.

Madam blinked. That was odd.

"When did you last see him?"

"Yesterday, round about two in the afternoon, ma'am."

"What? But he drove me to the Palace, didn't he?"

"No'm. That was Clarence, ma'am."

"And you haven't seen him at _all _since then?"

"No, ma'am."

But Wells saw _everything..._

"Are you sure?" she asked in a voice as sharp as the Low King's axe.

He met her gaze as steadily as was possible for a man with seventeen as yet unidentified forms of arthritis. "Yes'm."

"I see." There wasn't much of a reason for him to lie, she thought. What would he do with money? What would he be terrified of? He was already a walking corpse.

Not much reason to tell the truth either, then, a little voice pointed out. But the truth takes less effort, she replied silently.

She'd ask around, then, and... see what came up.

"Thank you, Wells." He nodded very gently, presumably for fear that his neck might snap with excessive pressure, the incessant fear of the primate and especially reasonable in a speciman such as Wells. She gestured vaguely at him, trying to convey a 'good man, well done' and a 'be very sure you know who you're dealing with in one', to cover her bases. It ended up as a curious sort of wiggle of the thumbs and a kind of snaking palm movement. Not, she decided, one for the books, and promptly fled the dank little outpost.

**(a) It was just as well for the disgruntled sea of light that no Morporkian citizen could hear its thoughts at that moment, because they would inevitably have pointed out that it was actually more a sort of salmon color, tinging purple in some bits.**

** (b) In a lavender gown, because she was feeling spontaneous and creative today.**

**--- **

"Pear shaped, that's what," said Angua as she came down from what _nobody noticed _was the general direction of the Captain's room.

"Er... sorry?" said Carrot, giving her a blank look.

"Pear shaped. This whole damn business is, I mean."

"Yes?" said the Captain, politely uncomprehending.

"Never mind," she said, sighing. "Anything turn up while I was in the den?" Carrot gave her a reproachful look. "Don't tell me you haven't got used to the Office Humor by now, Carrot, I shan't believe it."

"Nothing, really. Dr. Lawn said that all he'd learned after an hour of work was that Mister Vimes apparently no longer deals well with the word 'universe', so be sure not to use it around him, and that he wishes us luck, poor," Carrot reeled off, with the conscientiousness of one who has never heard of the word 'paraphrase' and wouldn't understand it if he had, "b-stards."

Angua covered her smile with one hand. "Not a bad sort for a doctor?"

"I'm sure that Dr. Lawn is a very fine man and doctor. Lady Sybil and Mister Vimes no doubt think the world of him."

Or at least that sizable portion of it which could be bought with 100,000 AM$, Angua thought, but with only half-hearted cynicism. There were other things on both their minds.

"Did Pediment report yet?"

"Yes, I've got it here." He reached for a neatly organized stack apparently arranged according to size, shape and color. "Uh, he says that Louisa closed the shades after Madam Meserole left and he couldn't make out anything through it."

"Really? That's a little bit suspicious, isn't it? It's been very warm..."

"She _may _have been too hot," said Carrot, but doubtfully.

"Yes, and the gnome we found concussed under that particularly big drift of papers with a bunch of spare change _may _have been an innocent, upstanding citizen who happened to have the misfortune to come to complain at Mister Vimes and then had paper work put on it." She thought of Vimes' desk. "Well, it could have happened," she conceded, "but even with Mister Vimes I kind of doubt it. Huh. _Hubert._"

"I don't know what you mean by that, Sergeant," say Carrot, who was a loyal soul.

The door opened, and both officers turned.

A very harried-looking Lawn came in. "Captain Carrot?"

"Hello, Dr. Lawn, is there something-" then he stopped, because Angua had gone pale and was staring at the doctor's case.

"That's it," she breathed.

"What?" Carrot looked from Angua to the doctor and back. "Just a moment, sir, we'll be right back..."

He steered her into the canteen and shut the door, firmly.

"The chemical," she said. "The one Sally sensed and I smelled."

"Will you be all right?"

She managed a weak smile at that. "I'll be fine, Carrot. It's not as strong. He's probably put it in a sterile container, by the smell."

He hesitated. "If you're sure..."

"Go on."

The Captain carefully guided her to the bench, and gave her one last concerned look before stepping back outside.

Dr. Lawn had too many things on his mind to register all this strange behavior on anything more than a subconscious level. "Read this," he snapped, as soon as the man was paying attention to him, and thrust the letter at him.

"It's blackmail," said Carrot slowly, after a minute of intense concentration.

"You amaze me."

"Where did you find this, sir?"

He explained. Carrot listened very, very hard. At the appropriate point in the narrative, he took out the syringe, which was promptly (if politely) snatched up and examined closely before being locked in the Evidence safe. When he had finished, the Watchman said gravely,

"And this happened yesterday?"

Mossy winced slightly. "Er, yes. I only just found the letter this morning, though."

"You didn't think these... cuts warranted going to the Watch, sir?"

"Not really, no. I've been a doctor in Ankh-Morpork for the past forty years, Captain. Old habits die hard."

Carrot ignored this, and said instead "Thank you for informing us, Doctor. It will no doubt aid us in our inquiries."

Dr. Lawn was disarmed by the solemn expression on the man's face, but he recovered quickly. "The man isn't really fit to be moved quite yet, but you can come in if you want to see him for yourselves, I'm sure."

"Your offer is appreciated. We will certainly let you know if anything turns up."

Lawn, who was at this point seriously unnerved, elected to nod weakly and back away slowly before limping out of the building.

Carrot watched him go, and then read the letter again. The details of the threat and the payment were unclear, but it was addressed to Master James, and signed by, if he was not much mistaken, one significant coachman.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Chapter Ten**

_In which yellow fog takes center stage and James the Inconsistent is officially following his companion Ladyship's example where the noble Watchmen are concerned_

Madam rapped once on Louisa's bedroom door before throwing it open in a ladylike fashion.

The room was quite dark, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. For some reason, the shade was drawn, which was... unusual. The air felt warm and stuffy and dry. She frowned at the gloom hanging over elegant furniture and luxurious decor, peered at the bed, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.

She paused, went very still, and listened properly.

There was _someone_ there. Rustling noises on the very edge of hearing, shadows that fell in the wrong places, something unfolding in the corner of her eye that could have been a wing -

She ducked.

There was a sound like tearing silk as claws ripped through the air where her head had just been and a curse. Madam took the opportunity to hurriedly step back into the hallway and also to wish, momentarily, for a nice, big machete. However, since she was unfortunately deficient in the area of big, lethal things at the moment, she chose instead to delicately lift her skirts a few inches from the floor, to avoid tangling, and kicked the tall, dark, and handsome figure taking up most of the doorway in the stomach. The sharp heel of her boot sank into the flesh, and she allowed herself a satisfied smirk, but a very brief one, because the intruder simply pulled the blade from his leg and twisted it into a perfect circle.

"My lord," said a quiet, mildly reproachful voice, and one of the shadows just behind her attacker's**(a) **shoulder opened two familiar blue eyes. "Really. It's not her fault; she has a naturally nosy nature."

"You had no such objection with that other man."

Louisa stepped forward, into the light, and waved one slender hand. "That was, sadly, necessary."

"And this is not? You said yourself, dearest, that she was... dangerously inquisitive."

"But had it not been for Bobbi, my lord, I would not be where I was today. I do retain some affection for her."

Madam almost opened her mouth, but thought better of it. There was no point in screaming, because from the speed at which he moved and the obvious enthusiasm he had for the prospect, she would be dead before she finished her sentence, always embarrassing in polite company. She listened with half an ear as they discussed what was, presumably, to be her fate, and concentrated on what she liked to call the little details.

The 'man' was somewhere around six feet, thin to the point of emaciation, and as pale as a corpse. She was pretty sure that the curving dark shapes that seemed to be part of or sprouted from his shoulder blades were wings, and she saw that he had long, perfectly manicured, not-quite-claw-like nails.

He also had fangs.

Vampire, she thought, and not, it would appear, a member of the illustrious League. One of the... hah... wild ones.

The argument seemed to be getting quite heated, and she considered making a break for it. It might not be fatal.

_Don't move, _said a voice in her head.

It was only natural that she obey it. In fact it was her whole purpose in life to obey the suggestions of that voice, which were entirely right and just and sensible, not like the shoddy, half-rate Hypnotic Voices you usually got nowadays. She immediately stopped looking thoughtfully at the stairs and became completely motionless. She did her best to breath shallowly.

_Better, _said the voice that was so very right, and turned its... attention... away from her, somewhat, and she caught the word 'bait' before falling back into oblivion.

Madam stared blankly, unseeing as they came to an agreement. When the voice started speaking again, she did as she was told, for once in her life.

None of the servants commented as Louisa and Madam left the building together. None noticed.

Nor did they notice, some time later, a noxious-looking yellow mist that seeped out of the window and quickly became lost in the heavier fog that was rolling over the city.

**(a) This would be the person who had completely failed to actually injure her and whom she had just divested of several ounces of flesh. Madam had Views. Such people are not to be messed with.**

**---**

By what was really, as has already been pointed out, a less-than-curious coincidence if you understood the mental workings of History personified, Constable Salacia**(a)** von Humpeding, Captain Carrot, and Sergeant Angua**(b) **came to the rescue...er... five minutes after Madam and Louisa had disappeared into the fog. Sally, who had been to the manor previously, led the way.

She looked, Carrot had commented earlier, rather vexed. He couldn't imagine why.

Angua, on the other hand, knew perfectly well why the vampire was vexed. The smell was faint, barely noticeable even by a werewolf's standards, at first sniff, but it seemed to distort all the other scents it brushed against and even at this level made her skin crawl. _Definitely _the same damn chemical.

They followed the rapidly disappearing constable through the gate and into the antechamber of the building, all gonnes metaphorically blazing. Sally was already making some relatively blameless clerk's life a small and private hell.

"...to see Madam Meserole," she finished, barely sparing a glance for her two colleagues. "There you are. Well, Mr. Samson? Where is she? And her ladyship, for that matter."

"Er...er..." said the unfortunate Samson, backing away from the vengeful Humpeding. He muttered something indistinct.

"Speak up."

"I... I believe they went out just a moment ago, miss..."

"Right. And I'm a constable, thank you so much!" she snapped. Carrot looked very serious. Angua hid a grin with one hand.

"Sorry, m-officer!"

"You'd do well to remember it. And thank you for your assistance, sir," she added, composedly.

In the background, Angua put her head in her hands and gave in to the oncoming flood of hilarity. Carrot gently steered the vampire away from her victim, who had retreated to his desk and was now so low down in his chair as to be hidden from any none too searching eyes, although an observant sort of person might have noticed that said desk was trembling oddly, because Samson was not a small man and he took up a certain necessary amount of space under the counter. The Captain refrained from sighing the weary sigh of an honest man much put-upon, but the thought was there.

"Have we got the search warrant?" Sally demanded, looking at the other two watchmen.

"Here," gasped Angua, once she had recovered. She waved the warrant**(c)** in the general direction of any desks that might be watching their antics in what could loosely be called an official manner.

There were no objections, so the trio ascended the stairs, at the top of which they separated in order to search the upper levels with maximum efficiency.

Sally went into Madam's chamber, and though she spent some time there, she found nothing helpful, although the extensive notes on the politics of the Sto Plains were mildly interesting, and because she was a kind soul at heart she replaced them in the loose panel under the loose floorboard in the fake bottom of the dresser and put the cloak over it properly. Never let it be said that vampires are not generous creatures. Soon after, she returned to the corridor to wait. Carrot had disappeared, and she could hear his voice, but something else was taking up most of her attention.

Angua was standing just outside of Louisa's bedroom, biting her own arm.

The constable blinked. "Uh... Sarge..."

Angua made a jerking motion with one hand that said very eloquently "Shutupshutupshutup."

A minute or so of awkward silence, and then Angua carefully let go of her abused arm and entirely failed to meet Sally's eyes.

"Don't go near the place," she muttered.

"Smelled _it_?"

The werewolf gave her a dry look. "Guess."

"Okay," Sally conceded, "Stupid question. How strong was it?"

"Not as strong as in Vimes' office, but I was out of there almost before I was in and I still... you saw."

"Yes."

Just then Carrot came out, a sickly-looking Jamie in tow.

"James here is coming with us back to the Watch House," he said, cheerfully. "I'm sure he will prove very willing and helpful and informative. No doubt this is all a mistake."

"No doubt," muttered Angua, but she looked slightly relieved. "Carrot? Louisa's room smelled of that... stuff."

His expression didn't change. "Ah? Then perhaps we ought to hurry."

**(a) Sally's two most common greetings, upon meeting a person for the first time, were "My name is Salacia Deloresista Amanita Trigestra Zeldana Malifee von Humpeding (in the short form). Call me Sally!" and "Put down the stake and nobody gets hurt." **

**(b) On the other hand, Angua's most common greeting was "I'm sorry? Was there something you wanted?" This doesn't quite give an accurate sense of the total effect this innocuous greeting generally created; possibly it was the way she smiled in such an open, friendly fashion that really made the difference. Or the charming little noise she made in the back of her throat.**

**(c) A #2 sledgehammer from Chalky the troll's workshop. Well, needs must.**

**---**

Igor was a teensy bit worried.

Like psychology, Igors didn't gravitate towards worry, or nervousness, on the whole. Nevertheless, this was definitely... well, apprehension at the very least. He made soothing cooing noises to his potatoes**(a)**, mostly to sooth himself.

Frankly, Vimes was scaring him. At first, after the stupid doctor had gone away, Vimes had been quite inert again, leaving Igor free to sail around his domain (cell) muttering triumphant Igorisms**(c)**. Though he was still forbidden to use his special techniques, it was definitely his win. But around one that morning, Vimes was still staring at the wall. In Igor's professional opinion, that was bloody odd; the man should have fallen asleep, no matter how mad, by now. And there was some new quality to Vimes' stare that was... unnerving.

Even to a modern Igor like himself.

He'd tried a little non-intrusive experimentation himself, too. He'd used, after a while, out of sheer exasperation, 'universe.'

What had scared him was that Vimes was no longer reacting to that.

Thus it had been something of a relief when Captain Carrot arrived, weird green stuff in hand, and asked him whether he would be able to make something of it, their registered alchemist being... otherwise occupied, earlier that morning.

Now, then, he bustled about, back to the Commander, and started playing with his chemicals, and did not notice the draft when the window creaked open slightly and let in a curling tendril of yellow mist.

**(a) Which had fins and swam around in an old aquarium he'd acquired, somehow or other, in Uberwald. When he was just a little Igor, already aware that he was different, he'd dreamed of running a seafood restaurant when he grew up. For now, he liked working for the Watch as much as anyone ever did; but he still cherished his hopes and dreams of bringing to Ankh-Morpork of the fish and chips of the future. Next kidney transplant(b), certainly, he often told himself.**

**(b) The most common unit of time for the average Igor.**

**(c) "Take that, you righteouth bathtard."**

**---**

As a child, Louisa had been renowned (by her parents, anyway) for her patience, complacence, and general amiable demeanor.

Madam's teaching had stripped away some of that, but at heart Louisa knew she would always be an innocent, selfless, loyal girl whose only ambition was for her loved ones, and the laid-back personality went hand in hand with the matter.

Really, she and Bobbi were two of a feather.

The Alchemist's Guild was not the ideal place for a secret hideout. Where, Louisa wanted to know, were the cold cement cells, chains and manacles, rough benches and table, tin mugs, and other trademarks of kidnappings and abductions and drug dens the world over?

At least the atmosphere was that of thick, fuggy smoke, she thought, and glanced at Madam.

The old lady seemed to have crumbled slightly when the Lord had overruled her will; now she stood slouchingly in the center of the basement, eyes fixed on some point behind Louisa's head. Louisa frowned at her.

"Bobbi, you ought to be pleased. Here you are in this lovely temporary resting place his lordship has fixed for you, and you look positively disgruntled."

Madam murmured something inaudible. Louisa frowned. She would have to have a word with the Lord about the strength of his mind games; Madam would be more useful sane and coherent, she was sure. Or at least as sane and coherent as she had ever been, which was, Louisa was prepared to admit, not an extraordinary amount.

She left Madam to amuse herself for a while and glided over to the alchemists huddled over the cauldron.

"Hello, honored sirs," she said brightly. Several of them jumped. Old fools. Pity neither she nor the Lord had had a passable knowledge of alchemy, but it couldn't be helped.

"Um. Hello, your ladyship," muttered the one she judged to be the most competent of the lot, not a terribly hard thing to achieve.

"Amadeus," she said, rather coolly. "And how goes your very important work?"

"Um. We. Um."

He was shaking and looked ashen, she noted. Interesting.

"Well?"

"We think. Um. We think there may be some, um, unforeseen complications. Uh."

"Unforeseen complications?" she said, and tittered. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Amadeus. I'm afraid I never studied alchemy."

"Um. It's, the, uh, octiron. That we burned. You remember?"

"Oh, you mean that shiny purplish green stuff?" said Louisa, taking terrible pleasure in the way he winced.

"Um. Yes. We think it... affected the solution."

"Oh dear. How?"

He gaped at her, and finally mumbled, staring at the tips of his pointy shoes, "we'renotreallyentirelysuremiss."

"Goodness gracious me. But of course you have a guess?" You could have used her voice to hack through ice, or someone's spinal cord.

"wethoughtmaybeitmight-"

"Slow down."

He looked helplessly at his colleagues, who inched away from him. Their chairs made little scraping noises as they squeaked across the floor.

"We think it may spread of its own accord, your ladyship."

She smiled pleasantly at him. "Pardon?"

He was positively curling in on himself, now. "I mean it can leap from person to person once it's infected one."

"I see. And how is it passed?"

"I don't know!"

"Hmm," she murmured, in a way that struck even more fear into the hearts of all alchemists present. "That is unfortunate. I believe I will have words for the Lord."

There was a general sigh of relief hanging in the air above the little cluster's head, so she added, for their benefit, "We will have to see about remedying the problem."

The relieved sigh in the air immediately disappeared. Alchemists have enough experience with the corporate world **(a) **to know what _that_ means.

**(a) It may seem unusual for a group of people generally oblivious to the concerns of reality and so forth to have any understanding of financespeak, but in fact a moment's thought will show that this is perfectly sensible. After all, the primary talent of alchemists is the far too common ability to turn gold into less gold(b), so they are constantly in 'slight difficulties' with their investors, or rather, their investors' attorneys, since anyone who invests in the Alchemists' Guild is undoubtedly gullible, if not masochistic or weary of life.  
(b) On some occasions they are also able to turn a house into a hole in the ground, or a national landmark into gnoll fodder and the basis of Harry King's industr****y.**


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Chapter Eleven**

_In which Carrot is the Good Cop, sort of, and the trap is ostensibly set_

It was seven o' clock in the morning, the sun was shining in open defiance of the date on the calendar, the birds were tweeting**(a)**, the smog was twisting upwards and weaving pretty paisley patterns, and a few of the good citizens of the city were venturing out into the streets and the many, many bad ones returning home for a good day's sleep. On the north side of the river, three dark figures whose jobs were to keep the latter away from the former and one dark figure who looked more than a trifle bewildered were hurrying through the narrow, twisting lanes.

"What did he mean by that?" Sally hissed, as she and Angua hurried to catch up with the Captain, who was striding ahead and propelling Jamie forward at the same time. They'd left fairly quickly after Carrot had made his ominous pronouncement, although they had had time to make absolutely sure that no one in the building knew where anybody of a Meserolean or Louisaish disposition was first.

"What?" said the werewolf, distractedly; she was watching Carrot intently.

"We ought to hurry, he said. Does he _know _something?"

"I couldn't say."

Which wasn't 'I don't know', Sally reflected, and then, because she was technically immortal, said so.

To her secret relief, Angua gave her an amused look. "You've been working with Mister Vimes for too long, Constable."

"And?"

"Alright then, I don't know. Trust me on this," said the sergeant. She rolled her eyes and sped up, but Sally was a vampire and not about to let anyone, even a werewolf, lead the way.

_Besides_ Carrot.

An aerial observer with a penchant for clacks logarithms might have commented on the nice binary effect as the pair swung back and forth in the order of lead. Alas, any message translated from their sequence would have been tragically short, since they stopped at the Yard five minutes later and, once inside, went straight down to the cells. And since, carrot was, as everyone knew, a kind and understanding soul, they passed the heavy, padlocked door outlined in glowing blue light that lead to Igor's domain by and instead entered an empty cell farther down the hall.

Still, the sight of the bare little stone room**(b) **seemed to snap the boy out of the trance he had apparently been walking in. He jerked away from Captain Carrot and looked rather pale. "Am I under arrest?"

"Not... exactly, sir," said Carrot, carefully. "You're assisting us with our inquiries."

"We'd like to ask you some questions," Angua translated briskly. "So-"

"-sit down. You might want to find a book, too," Sally finished. Angua glared at her. She grinned. Carrot looked blankly from one undead female to the other before shaking his head and turning back to Jamie.

"Sir. Can you tell us what happened on the night of the ball?"

The boy hesitated, and then started on what Sally recognized as the same account he'd given when she'd asked, with added stuttering. She listened long enough to verify that he was actually reciting, word for word, what he had last time before stepping in.

"That's enough of that, kid."

He stared at her. "Huh?"

Both her superior officers were also looking at her inquisitively. She sighed, and explained,

"It's obvious that he's lying. He's repeating everything he told me. Does that suggest anything to you? Because to me it looks like he -"

"- memorized his speech? Yes, I see," Angua cut in, probably by way of revenge for Sally's earlier interruption. "Well, Mr. James? Speak up."

"I'm, er, not..." he stuttered, giving the vampire a nervous glance, "...not lying. Honest."

"Very convincing."

"I'm not!"

"Do you think we're stupid, sir?"

He goggled at the smiling Angua for a while, and then seemed, all at once, to sag. He was very good at it. His entire frame drooped.

"No, ma'am," he mumbled.

"Good lad," said Carrot brightly from where he was sitting on the one piece of furniture in the cell, a cot, and watching. "You can trust us."

Jamie, though only twelve, was intelligent and had had rather more experience with the outside world than most children thanks to Madam. He shot Carrot an incredulous look.

"It wasn't my fault," he began. "Louisa and that horrible fellow made me - I didn't want to lie to you."

Sally opened her mouth to interrupt, but Angua shushed her, eyes on the kid.

"I was mostly telling the truth, anyway. I did hear someone getting into the coach. I did think it was Louisa. She wasn't there when we got out. But... but..." he started to tremble, almost imperceptibly, though nothing related to human fear is imperceptible to werewolves and vampires, "...there was this yellow mist coming out of the window, near the beginning. Lots of it. And it sort of coiled off all in a bunch, like."

Sally went very, very still. The other woman**(c)**glanced at her briefly before resuming her vigil.

"And I didn't mention what happened afterwards, either," he mumbled.

"Do tell," said Angua, calmly.

"That was when Louisa came to my room."

"Alone?"

"No. That man was with her."

"Perhaps now would be the appropriate time to tell us who that man was," she observed.

"I don't know!"

"What you saw, then."

Jamie hesitated. "He was... tall. And skinny, like, _really _skinny. And he had dark hair, and a... a cape, I guess, I mean it looked sort of like a cape..."

"Wings," Sally murmured. "Some of the broods from the mountainous regions have them even in human form." Angua nodded, thoughtfully.

"I see," she said, addressing Jamie. "And what did they say to you?"

"Louisa asked me if I'd seen anything happen in the coach. I said that I hadn't and what was going on and she said that nothing was going on, her friend had just been worried that I'd gotten the wrong impression. I said of what? And she said don't worry. But then she made me tell her what I thought had happened and she said I mustn't mention the bats or she would have to be stern, and then the... the other one opened his hand and I saw things _glinting_..."

Sally exchanged a meaningful look with Angua. Angua exchanged a meaningful look with Sally. Sally exchanged a second, more meaningful look with Angua. Carrot gave them both a meaningful look. It was extremely meaningful; it meant 'stop giving each other meaningful looks.'

"Hmm," he said. Jamie looked petrified. "And then?"

"They left."

There was an empty, inviting, silence. Angua and Sally were so apprehensive they forgot to give each other meaningful looks.

"And... then they came again. Last night. They said they were going away today, and - and now Madam's gone..."

Great, globby tears welled up in his wide blue eyes, suddenly. This did not create the reaction he might have expected; Angua pursed her lip in what could have been skeptical disapproval, Sally knew her face was quite impassive - as if a comforting smile would help in her case - and Carrot only said, "Cheer up, there's a good boy."

When it became apparent that Jamie wasn't about to say anything more that was particularly coherent - especially not under the gaze of three watchmen - the Captain stood up and said, in a final sort of way, "Thank you. You've been very helpful. If you could just wait here, sir, until we can tell you more."

He closed his notebook and offered the tear-stained boy a bright smile and a handkerchief, which said boy ignored. "So I _am_ under arrest," he said, accusingly.

"Not at all," said Carrot. "You're in protective custody."

"What's the difference?"

"I don't know. The _Laws and Ordinances of the Twin Cities of Ankh and Morpork _didn't say."

"...what?"

"Never mind," said Angua, cutting the Captain off. "Come on, Carrot."

All three watchmen left.

After a while, a heavy yellow mist poured through the small, barred window. Jamie stared at it, wide-eyed and frightened.

It solidified into something dark and man-shaped, but seemed insubstantial - _ashy -_ where the shafts of sunlight hit it.

It said something.

"I told them!" said Jamie, hurriedly. "I said, I said about you, and Lou, and telling me you were doing something and not to talk to the Watch, and I said about Madam being gone. I did! I even cried," he added, with a smidgen of reproach, "like you said, and it wasn't easy, either."

The shadowy shape made a noise that shared some qualities with a laugh but lacked the most fundamental one, that is, humor. It dissolved, and left the boy staring at the badly-spelled writing on the wall for some time after.

**(a) Well, briefly. And then squelching, because any bird stupid enough to call attention to itself in Ankh-Morpork is not destined to have long in the world of the living, ambulatory and unmaimed.**

**(b) Bare in relative terms. Almost half an inch of stone had been carved off the walls in some places from constant and relentless graffiti, but it all basically canceled out, right?**

**(c) For a given value of 'woman', true. A given value being three weeks out of four, in this case.**

---

Louisa was ready for him when he solidified out of really quite thin mist, and didn't bat an eye**(a)**.

"Dearest," he said, flatly.

"My lord," she replied. "How goes it?"

"That... boy claims he did what he was supposed to. He's probably telling the truth, but in any case they will have found her missing by now."

"Quite."

"Why is she still alive again, love?"

"Because I retain a fondness for her. Although," she said, with distaste, "it is receding. You oughtn't have been so firm with her, lord, it's left her positively crushed."

"I apologize, of course," he said carelessly.

"Good. And now, there was something else I wanted to discuss with you."

"Oh?"

"I am sure you recall the octiron you had them burn under the concoction? For, ah... added potency?"

"Yes, of course."

"According to Amadeus, it is having unexpected effects on the stuff."

"Such as?"

"He says it spreads."

"_Ah,_" he said, and his mouth curved into the beginnings of a genuinely delighted smile. She did not look at his teeth.

"You expected this?"

"No. It merely... occurred to me. After we had put it in," he added, a shade hastily.

"I'm sure." She started to pace. "I thought the plan was to infect only those people it was necessary to? I know you had your own plans, my lord, but really, this is too much.

When I am... where I intend to be, who knows how far it will have spread? How will I get rid of it?"

He waved a slender hand, languidly. "Do not concern yourself. Right now only Vimes is infected. We can get rid of him before it passes - I can guarantee none of the others have caught it yet."

"Now?"

"Soon."

"And the rest of it? The Patrician?"

"I only wish to see what happens - in the nature of an experiment, shall we say. I can kill him once it has taken effect and I... get what I want out of the matter. I'm sure with him it will be most enlightening. He is famous for being inscrutable, is he not?"

"Oh, certainly."

"Hence the interest, sweetheart."

"Very well."

He nodded, once, curtly, and strode away. Slowly, absently, she touched the wood stake at her side.

The world was a wonderful place when everyone worked to get along.

**(a) Although she sometimes made a particular point of batting her eyes.**

**---**

Igor's workbench was a wonderful display of the many and varied things that could be done with seventeen crucibles, two alembics, a retort, a periodic table**(a), **and lots and lots of chemicals in all colors of the rainbow.

And some that had never been found in any rainbow anywhere ever ever ever, too.

Vimes was apparently transfixed by the gorgeous array, but Sally saw that he really just happened to be staring in that general direction, because Igor was jiggling the cart back and forth in excitement and the Commander's gaze wasn't moving at all.

"Well, Constable Igor?" said Angua. "What's going on?"

"Thith... thith thithnethth!" Igor sputtered. Even Carrot backed away in the face of the spray. "It'th amazthing!"

"What _is_it, Igor?"

He subsided slightly. "It'th a complicated cocktail of athetate, ammonium, opium, Klatchian coffee -"

"_Klatchian coffee?_"

"Klatchian coffee," said Igor, nodding. "And -"

"Never mind," she said, "I don't want to know. But what does it do?"

"I've no bloody idea, thargeant."

"You don't? But I thought -"

"A thing like thith? It could do practically_anything!_ Even without the octiron it's volatile -"

"Octiron!"

"Yeth, tharge," said Igor, patiently.

"The metal?" Carrot interjected.

"Nos-noththur. The gath."

He was met by blank looks, and sighed expressively. "Amountth to the thame thing really, sir. Thur."

"So it's magical?"

"Yeth thur."

"Bloody hell," said Sally, succinctly. It seemed to summarize their feelings, after all.

Their horrified revery was interrupted, however, when the heavy door sprang open. A tall, pleasant-faced young man was on the other side.

"Hullo, Andre," said Carrot, breaking the silence first. "What's that you've got there?"

The newcomer was carrying a thick set of files under his arm. "Suspect... er... resumes," he said. "Commander Vimes ordered them yesterday, but since he's" he gestured at the immobile man on the slab "out of action, I thought I should give them to you. Was that all right, sir?"

"Very good," said Carrot, taking the sheaf of papers. "These will no doubt come in handy. Feel free to go back to your headquarters," he added, in a friendly yet firm sort of way, when Andre seemed tempted to hang around. "I'm sure you're needed there."

"Er, not really, sir, it's been rather -"

"I'm _sure you're needed there,_" said Angua, just a touch louder than perhaps required, who had suddenly appeared by his shoulder.

"Oh. Right," said Andre, looking slightly crestfallen. He fled.

"Huh," said Carrot, who was skimming through the papers, index finger lightly touching the page.

They waited, in silence. Igor was distractedly chewing on a glove.

Minutes passed. Carrot was a slow reader.

Finally, he pulled one, rather slimmer file from the greater stack. "I think this is it."

Sally blinked first. "You're sure?"

"No," said Carrot. "Take a look?"

She did so. After a while, she became aware that Angua was reading over her shoulder. She ignored the fact, because she had other things on her mind.

_Lots _of them.  
**  
(a) Which was, incidentally, somewhat larger and even more misshapen than its Roundworld equivalent. This was, among other things, because the little square labeled 'octiron' _would _keep moving around.**


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Chapter Twelve**

_In which various parties go forth, according to plan, and Vetinari goes mad, less so _

**CABLE STREET STATION REPORT ON SUSPECT #1618: GABRIEL VON DHAMPYR**

_Date of birth: Grune 17th, Year of the Unexpected Penguin, some time before 4:00 in the morning_

_Time of undeath: May 1st, Year of the Aerial Pig, 9:36_

_Height: Unknown. Probably in the seven foot range._

_Weight: Unknown._

_Hair: Black_

_Eyes: Black_

_Full Name: Gabriel Maladictus Augustus Octavinto Pygmalion __this goes on for sixteen pages? Bugger that, whoever finds this tell Andre I'm going for a walk _(in a different hand) _von Dhampyr (sorry, sir, she fed the list to her dog)_

_Father: Gabriel von Dhampyr_

_Mother: Buffy von Dhampyr_

_Notes: Wizard, or maybe ex-wizard - as yet unknown how vampirism affects magical ability, but it is believed to, if anything, accentuate certain powers, especially those of sensory perception. Names inherited from his 'killer', who has been officially staked as of last Spindlewinter. Born and raised in Uberwald (Dhampyr Forest). Ironically, had no trouble with vampires until he arrived in Ankh-Morpork, where he was immediately attacked because he was recognized as having originated from a family of Vampire Slayers away from their source of power (Dhampyr Forest). Apparently they were really good at improvised stakes._

_Dhampyr went to the Temperance League immediately after his turning, but during his 'cold bat' period had an unsuccessful transfer and went insane. Escaped in the ensuing confusion from the 'specialists' who had had stakes at ready and flew back to his homeland, where he proceeded to kill the rest of his surviving family (we're not sure why) and almost half a village nearby. Has since disappeared._

_And even if we found him he'd be out of our jurisdiction, Mister Vimes, so stop looking like that._

"Vampire slayers?" said Carrot.

"Unthuctheththful tranthferth?" said Igor, with an expression of bliss on his face, insofar as it was possible to tell. The others backed away a little.

And, of course...

"Buffy?" said Angua.

Sally looked at the three questioning faces and sighed. "Yes, vampire slayers. It's traditional, in some areas, for a man who managed to stake one once to pass the... trade... on to his children. Eventually the system reached the point where slayers got regular pay and pensions. Steady business, too, 'cos the vampires are always up again by the time the villagers start getting restive about spending so much on this man who isn't even doing anything for them _now._"

"Unthuctheth-" Igor began, but was hurriedly cut off.

"I'm not an expert. Try Otto Chriek. But you know how the craving transference works, yes?"

"Bathically."

"It can be... perverted? I dunno. Anyway they end up craving almost... everything, and of course they go mad after that."

"Hmm," muttered Igor.

"And," Sally said, before Angua could open her mouth, "Buffy was the founder of the von Dhampyr line of vampire slayers. They were unusual because most of them were female, as their founder's name suggests."

"Huh," said Angua. "He didn't sympathize with his ancestor's decision once he'd seen things from the other guy's point of view?"

"Maybe. But that doesn't really matter, does it? A _wizard vampire. _What on the Disc are we going to do?"

"We don't know it's him."

"No, we don't," Carrot interjected. "So I think we'd be well-advised to put that particular line of questioning on hold for a while, and direct our attentions to the Alchemists' Guild."

"The alchemists? You really think _they _have anything to do with it?"

"Where else would he get those chemicals that Igor listed? Are they common ones, Igor?"

"No, thur. Not the stuff you could get at the pharmathy."

"I didn't think so. He - they - _must _have been to the Guild. They might have stolen what they needed, or they might have gotten the alchemists in on it, somehow, but they were there, one way or another. We'll see what we can find."

"Yessir," said the sergeant and the constable. The three went forth, leaving Igor all alone with his patient.

---

It is traditional for the masterminds**(a) **of an evil plan to remain at their secret headquarters and plot, while relying on their incompetent sidekicks to do the actual work. If there is more than one mastermind in on an individual plan, then they are, by necessity, to cluster together around the big, important, device/person/spell/man-eating lizard that is central to their plan, lest the hero have any kind of issue finding his intended victims and getting rid of them.

Neither the lady or the Lord was much for tradition. It followed logically, then, that Louisa made sure that most of the work was done by herself or the Lord, and things they could not do, like the alchemy, were tested upon completion. The potion, for instance, they'd fed to the alchemist who had been with them from Pseudopolis and had been showing signs of restiveness; poetic irony appealed to Louisa's artistic soul, and anyway he had been thinking of blackmail, according to the Lord, so he deserved it. And what he'd gotten after they'd verified that the symptoms were correct, too, although it had been a little messy and the maids no doubt would have a job getting the stains out of the woodwork.

Still, she would admit that she was, at the moment, hanging around the concoction central to their plan. But she would have been doing so even if it hadn't been Traditional.

Something occurred to her. She examined her nails for a moment, turning the idea over in her mind, and then climbed the stairs to a room that was technically a basement, as opposed to a cellar.

He was feeding on something small and squeaky, which was making unpleasant gurgling noises in his hand. She winced delicately and cleared her throat.

Pause. The gurgling stopped, and when she looked up his hand was empty. She didn't wonder where he'd put the thing, because wondering like that was wont to give her bad dreams in the night.

"My lord, when will you be disposing of Vetinari?"

"Soon, no doubt."

"When?"

"You are impatient, my dear?"

"Obviously. I must admit I am curious as to what his... reaction will be."

"As well you should be."

"And," Louisa continued, "it would be just as well, would it not, for me to be arrested while you are out?"

"I suppose. Especially as that girl, Sally, will be with them. I haven't truly fed for some time; that alchemist tasted insipid. I am weak."

"Quite. Why not kill two birds if you have two stones available?"

"I will go."

"Thank you, my lord."

He waved an impatient hand, and she retreated back downwards, not anxious to be treated to another glimpse of whatever unfortunate rodent he was consuming.

Madam looked... curiously alert, but she was still silent and standing in the corner, so Louisa assumed that, for now, all was well. She went about her business and poured the contents of the cauldron into a flask for the Lord. She watched him go.

She waited.

**(a) The Super Villains, the Archenemies, the Head Honchos, etc. They have been called many names, but universal to them is a tendency to cackle and wear dress-like garments. This, sadly for all budding heroes, is not enough to identify them with, since it also is true of most of the fairer sex past the age of 60, once compounded with a sufficient amount of gin.(b)  
**

**(b) Although there are many who argue that members of the fairer sex over the age of 60 and compounded with a sufficient amount of gin **_**are, **_**by definition, Super Villains.**

**---**

Gabriel glided just below the clouds that hung over the city**(a). **He did not think in the same way that other people thought, and neither did he feel in the same way that other people felt, but he was aware of a slight prickling in his gut, as of a premonition.

He ignored it, and flew faster.

Some people talk about the wonder that a vampire must experience as they float, weightless, above the rest of the world. Their description is entirely inaccurate. Vampires experience no joy in flight, because for them it feels mundane, earthly, and dead. They know, intellectually, how wonderful it is and must seem to humanity, but that is all.

Really, most things feel mundane, and earthly, and dead for vampires. Almost everything that doesn't involve blood, for instance. Gabriel had it worse than most, for... various reasons.

Beneath him, the Patrician's Palace rose up slightly above the architecture surrounding it. He descended in elegant circles, eyes fixed on one of the windows, which was open.

**(a) Permanently. It is a curious truth that, even on its sunny days, Ankh-Morpork is overhung by a fine layer of cloud that darkens the blue sky and makes everything slightly hazy, and the only real variation in Ankh-Morpork's weather is the solidity of the fog, ranging from barely extant - said 'sunny' days - to extremely extant - downpours, deluges, and blizzards. From a mapmaker's perspective, it makes the whole concept of 'birds' eye view' difficult, especially under the literary constraints instated by Quimby. From the height necessary to see a complete map of the city, a bird would be blinded (and probably choked) by a thin layer of brown smog, while any higher the city would just be a brown smear of a shape familiar to anyone who's ever ventured behind a Klatchian Take-out Bar on a bad night.**

---

Igor turned around at the noise. His eyes bugged out of his head, but only slightly and in an anatomically possible**(a) **fashion.

Vimes, who was standing up, gave him a rather dry look. "As you were, Constable."

"Thur! What are you - what -"

"I'm sorry, Igor, I have places to be, things to do, people to hit. I really can't stay to chat."

He ignored the composite man's protests. He left.

In the streets, he took a moment to inhale a breath of air, paused, and shuddered. And he headed towards the Palace.

**(a) Well, anatomically possible for Igors, anyway.**

**---**

The window of the Oblong Office is always open.

It is one of the many idiosyncracies of Lord Havelock Vetinari. Nobody, of course, comments on it, but most notice it. Especially in winter, because he also refused to light the fire in his grate or even send his ink down to the kitchen to be melted**(a).**

There were a few theories, although not nearly as many as there were theories concerning other areas of the Patrician's life and lifestyle. Hughnon Ridcully occasionally thought the man is doing it to test the physical stamina of his visitors as well as the mental, which is a given; Sir Samuel Vimes suspected that he is simply unable to shut it because excessive amounts of paint have been applied to the frame.

The Patrician himself would have told anyone who asked that he enjoyed the brisk fresh air.

Because of all of the above and the resultant haze of suspicion that naturally accompanies an open window, Gabriel entered through the front grate, claws drawn in, wings folded neatly over his shoulders, looking entirely the somberly-dressed gentlemen. He passed through with no trouble, and was, importantly, _ushered _- invited - in by the guards.

He ascended the stairs unimpeded, and, when he arrived at the top level, calmly made Drumknott realize how perfectly normal it was for this man to be here at this time.

He opened the door and went into the office.

The second time someone had burst into his office without announcement this week, thought Lord Vetinari. And it's only Tuesday.

"Von Dhampyr, I believe," he said, looking up at the intruder.

"Expecting me?" said the vampire smoothly, gliding in.

"You could say that. And her ladyship?"

"Not here," said Gabriel. "She must be satisfied with a second-hand account of...events."

"How uncharacteristic of her."

"Yes, I was surprised, too." He drew back his wings and, matter-of-factly, pulled out the syringe.

Vetinari raised an eyebrow.

"What? No manipulation? No attempts to talk me out of it? I am disappointed, Your Lordship."

"Alas, I find myself at a loss, Mr. Dhampyr. I am... empty-handed."

"Oh?" He looked disappointed. "What a pity. I was hoping for a more interesting encounter, my lord. Extend your arm, please, save time."

The man smiled, and rolled up his sleeve, and then the prickling in his gut became a fully-fledged set of butterflies, such as he hadn't felt since he'd escaped the Ribboners.

But Gabriel was practiced at ignoring such emotions. Nervousness was natural, probably, if anything was natural at this point. Perhaps Vetinari was in shock; perhaps that was why he was standing and smiling.

Almost gently, he pushed the needle into the main artery at the wrist, watching the man's eyes. When all the green liquid had been injected into his blood stream, he pulled it out.

He returned the now empty syringe to its place and regarded Vetinari curiously, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

Any minute now.

Any... minute... now...

Silence. Vetinari shrugged and moved back to his desk, where he sat down and began working on some paperwork. Gabriel kept his eyes on him, but felt, for the first time, doubt creeping into his mind.

"The potion works. Why isn't it affecting you?" he said, keeping the hiss out of his voice.

"I believe," said Vetinari, lightly, "that the term is 'already mad'."

"Already mad?_ You?_"

"Quite. Or extremely sane."

"That doesn't explain -"

Then his attention was distracted, because another heartbeat was approaching. He whirled around.

"You know, Vetinari," said Vimes, "that explains so much about you that it's not even funny."

The vampire looked from him back to the inexplicably sane (whatever he said) Patrician. "This is impossible."

"Is it?" said Vetinari. "As far as I understand it, we both_ are _mad."

"Yep," Vimes agreed. "Very, very much so."

"But you aren't," he said, with increasing... apprehension. "The potion - it - it's supposed to turn you back to your deepest, darkest selves, a thousandfold. _You," _he snapped, pointing at the Commander, "are supposed to become a violent, mindless beast. Everything I found suggested it! It should have -"

"Oh, so _that's _it," said Vimes. "Well, I'm sure your predictions were lovely, but what actually happened was I went knurd. Completely. You bastard," he added, as an afterthought.

Vetinari looked blank as Gabriel whirled on him. "This is ridiculous! It does not happen like this. It cannot happen like this."

"Picky, picky," said Vimes, unimpressed.

"And you, Lord Vetinari? How is this your true nature?"

"What makes you think it isn't?" said Vetinari, evenly. "What else, exactly, would my 'true nature' be?"

Louisa would make this better, Gabriel thought, with the mad certainty that comes to the frantic. That was what she was meant to do. How could he feed on these, these persistently rational humans?

"You will go, and I will follow," he said, shortly. "We are going to the Watch House." I'll be able to face a mere slip of a girl, he reassured himself, fresh blood or no.

"Or?" said Vetinari, sounding genuinely curious.

"On pain of pain," said the vampire.

"You have to admit," said Vimes, "he's succinct."

So, on pain of pain, they went.

**(a) Except for the notable occasion in the winter of the Year of the Befuddled Sparrow, when Drumknott insisted, because he'd just seen Vetinari taking out one of his Special Knives and beginning to saw a tiny hole in the top layer of frozen ink for better access.**


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Chapter Thirteen**

_In which the Watch House cells are crowded, the storm begins and ends, and there is light_

Louisa was, among other things, meticulous.

She carefully brushed her hair until it gleamed like extremely well brushed blonde hair. She made sure that not a single strand was out of place when she had finished weaving a complex and rather heavy bun out of it. She fixed all the small smudges in her makeup. She smoothed out her dress.

Then she swept over to the cauldron where the alchemists were clustered, looking woebegone, and said imperiously "Where is the sleeping potion?"

"Er, here, your ladyship," stuttered the one closest to her, whose name she had, despite aforementioned meticulousness, completely forgotten. He fumbled with something small and black and then handed her the vial, which was full to the brim of something disappointingly clear and unimpressive looking.

"Why, thank you," she said, and gave him a brilliant smile that made him blush hotly, because it often paid to work on people skills and in any case she was leaving this dump soon anyway. Then, with all eyes on her, she uncapped the vial and drank every last drop.

There was a shocked silence, and then a thud as she hit the floor. The alchemists, who had a good instinct for self-preservation, hurriedly backed away, knocking over several stools in the process.When it became apparent that she was quite unconscious, they looked at each other, went very pale, and fled the basement.

Alchemists move fast. By the time the Watch was knocking at the door, they were dressed in more ordinary clothes**(a) **and indistinguishable from their brethren.

At least, to the human eye.

---

"Watch investigation, sir," said Carrot. "We've got a warrant, see?" He brandished the mallet in an entirely non-threatening way at Silverfish's face.

"What? Oh. Yes. This way, Mr... " Silverfish squinted at the face looming large in front of him, and had a sudden burst of memory, of the sort Carrot tended to inspire in people. "Captain Carrot, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir, it is," said Carrot. "Lead on, Mr. Silverfish."

Mr. Silverfish, looking faintly bemused**(d), **did so.

Carrot was rarely impressed by things that were as familiar to him as the Alchemists' Guild Building, and Sally hadn't been there long enough to pay attention to it, but Angua was always vaguely awed by the speed with which alchemists tended to be able to erect a rough Guild Hall after the most recent explosion. She wondered how they did it.

Then she had other things on her mind, though, because familiar scents - one scent, really - were working their way up through the bloody floorboards.

"Carrot?" she said, tensely. Behind her, she could _hear _Sally's fangs lengthening.

"Right," he said. "Sir, with your permission, we will now be continuing our investigation downstairs."

"Er, really? Er, I don't know -"

"Thank you very much, sir. The Watch appreciates your compliance with government policies and valuable assistance."

"Er, I didn't actually -"

"We will keep it in mind during future interactions with the Alchemists' Guild."

The little light in Silverfish's head had finally gone on. "Oh. Yes. Quite."

"This way, I believe?" Carrot said brightly. Behind him, the vampire and the werewolf rolled their eyes in unison.

"That's just the way to the old basements, no one -"

They never found out what no one did there, though, because Carrot was already briskly descending into the gaping mouth of the basement, with Sally and Angua close on his heels.

"Well?" said Angua, as they reached the dank room that lay beneath the Guild.

"Come look," said Carrot, without turning to face them. He was bent over...

... Louisa, whose prone form was on the floor. Even in unconsciousness, she appeared quite composed. She looked as if she had been about to meet someone important, actually. If Angua wasn't mistaken, she was wearing fresh lipstick.

Hmm.

Next to her, Madam was standing and smiling at them. Her eyes were dull and lifeless.

Sally shuddered.

"What is it?" murmured the sergeant.

"He's... suppressed her."

"Oh."

"Constable?" said Carrot. He was attempting to rouse the woman.

"Lost cause," said Angua briskly. "She's really out of it, I can smell it. I think she took some sort of drug. And Madam has been, er, made to obey von Dhampyr's wishes."

Carrot looked blank. "How - oh. The whole... telepathy thing you told me about?"

"Yes."

"_Tele,"_he muttered, apparently on automatic, "meaning I see, and_pathos, _meaning oatmeal, so that would be... I see your oatmeal?"

"I see your brain," said Angua patiently. "I can read your thoughts."

"Ah." He glanced at Madam. "She looks it. Angua, can you -"

"I'm on it," she said, and ignored the incredulous look Sally gave her. She closed her eyes, lifted her face slightly...

First there was the purple haze, tinting the world of scent, which she recognized as what she was coming to think of as the Damnably Weird Potion Thing. She tried to push it aside and the feeling that came with it. Yes, here - Louisa's pale, vernal green pool, streaked with darker emerald.

The scent of angry, bloodthirsty male vampire hit her nostrils, all of a sudden, and at the same time she realized that was what she had smelled under the overwhelming DWPT in Louisa's room. It was, for some reason, glittery electric blue, but somehow none the less forceful and mildly terrifying for that.

Without opening her eyes, she listed in monotone what she was sensing.

Next came the alchemists. They had been clustered around the concentrated purple spot from which the rest of the DWPT odor emanated, and were barely shadows in the nose's eye, but still there and traceable. Recent, then.

"There were alchemists here," she said finally. "I can probably find them even now, if you like."

"Do you think it's worth the effort?"

She hesitated, and then said, "Probably not. They stink of fear. I'll be able to find them again one way or another."

"All right, let's get these two back to the Yard. Shall we?"

And before they left, Carrot made sure to make it absolutely clear to Silverfish that the Watch was in no way trying to impinge on Guild rights and would not of course suggest that the basements be blocked off until further investigation could be done.

Silverfish sagged and mumbled, when the six foot six dwarf was gone,

"I was afraid of that."

**(a) For alchemists. Which is to say they changed from a dark(b) cowled robe into a dark robe s_ans _hood, and remembered to put on their lightweight helmets.**

**(b) Incidentally, robes worn by alchemists are made of the same material as the rather more, er, practical clothes worn by Vetinari's Special Clerks, because in both professions there is a distinct need for something that doesn't show the little marks. In the case of the alchemists' robes, however, the marks that might otherwise have shown would have a rather wider range of colors. For the clerks, there's only ever one(c).**

**(c) Because Igors never come to their attention. If they did, it would be a green-black-black instead of a red-black-black, and who knows what terrible clashing could occur? It's these little details that really make the difference in Morporkian style choices.**

**(d) Not, on the whole, an unusual expression for Mr. Silverfish. **

**---**

It was a dark and stormy day.

Which was odd, because only a few hours earlier the sky had been quite blue. Not odd compared the rest of the strange weather they'd been having, but... odd.

Stranger yet was the trio strolling down the way, had there been anyone outside to see them. But Ankh-Morpork citizens have an instinct for trouble in the same way spiders have an instinct for rain, and the current weather handily combined the two traits. If they _had _been outside, they might have observed that the tallest of the three was walking behind the other two and appeared to be looming as best he could, which was quite well.

They might also have noticed that one of the leading pair was using a cane but appeared quite spry, insofar as it is possible to tell with silhouettes, and the other one was proceeding in a way traditionally associated with watchmen. The one proceeding was carrying an axe, which the looming one occasionally glanced and smirked at. Yes, a careful observer would have been able to tell, as a smirk makes a quiet yet distinct noise.

They might have noticed, too, that a thick blue coil of smoke was rising up above the head of the one with the axe, and might have come to the conclusion that here was a dark and eldritch power at work.

Vimes removed his cigar and breathed out more smoke. Vetinari politely took two steps to the left before continuing. Vimes grinned. Madness, he thought, if what he was doing could really be called thinking, had its good points. Although it was hard to plead temporary insanity to an audience of scorpions, but hey, he might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

"Not really a good day for a stroll through our charming city, I am afraid," said Vetinari, without warning. "The weather, alas, is being uncooperative." Something about his tone of voice suggested that it _should _have been cooperative. Knowing Vetinari, this was probably true.

Gabriel hissed something unspeakable.

He was not, on the whole, a happy vampire. The thing about Gabriel was that, frankly, in his view the only good human was a mad human, because the madness made the blood heady and sweet in a way he could never have imagined while limited by his stupid, early days as a man, trapped in that heavy body and always, always feeling the stuff rushing through his veins and fearing the loss of it. And, well, neither Vimes or Vetinari looked like they would be very appetizing at the moment.

He was _hungry,_damnit.

Well. That would all be over soon. He had more of it with him, and he would give it to them all and then he would feed, and everything would be perfectly fine. Pseudopolis Yard was just around the corner.

Constable Visit-The-Unbeliever-With-Explanatory-Packets**(a)** really was a very nice man underneath it all. He did his best for the whole world, spreading the Good News in convenient, metaphorically bite-sized pamphlet form, and he honestly believed every word he said and read**(b) **about his religion.

So he didn't deserve the horrible shock that he was met with when his allegedly insensible and mad boss, his other, bigger boss who was often considered to be equally mad and certainly very unholy, and a Foul Creature with fangs standing behind both of them in what definitely looked like a pose that could break the Nineteenth Piece of Friendly Advice for a Concerned Omnian, that is, "Try not to impose on other people by looking cool, scary, or extremely tall. Saws can be taken up if necessary in order to accomplish this goal."

"Hullo, Constable Visit," said Vimes, amiably as if he wasn't a part of one of the most terrifying trios in history.

Constable Visit tried to recover.

"It's Visit-The-Unbeliever-With-Explanatory-Packets, sir," he said reproachfully, out of habit.

"-The-Unbeliever-With-Explanatory-Packets, I was just about to say that," said Vimes defensively, equally out of habit. He blinked and seemed to remember something. "Oh. Yes. Tell everyone they are not, under any circumstances, to come down to the cells with us, will you?"

"Are you sure, sir?"

"Very," said Vimes, glancing at the vampire. "And now I think we'll be off."

The vampire looked displeased but didn't say anything. And as they filed through the door to the cells, Visit could have sworn that Lord Vetinari smiled pleasantly at him. He shuddered.

Really, it was a mercy that he made sure the fool didn't remember any of it, thought Gabriel, as they went up and down the Cell Stairs**(d)**.

"What is the point of these, exactly?" he snapped, as they began the descent.

"People complained," said Vimes cryptically. Gabriel did not press the point, because he was more concerned with the voices he could hear floating towards them from an open cell.

"...I think she's faking it, now," said the werewolf sergeant. "Yes, look, she's peeking through her lashes, see?"

Then she must have smelled him, because he saw her face go ashen. "Bugger."

"What -" said von Humpeding, and then she saw him. He had already closed the door behind him, and with a twist of his mind made sure they all heard the lock click.

"Louisa," he said. She was already on her feet, looking business like, because the watchmen were busy being surprised and hadn't thought to restrain her.

"My lord," she replied. "How goes - why on the Disc did you bring them along? For that matter, why on the Disc haven't you killed them yet?"

"Apparently we aren't mad enough for him," said Vimes.

She looked momentarily thrown off, and stared at the newcomers. "My lord? Did something happen with the potion? I am sure we can deal with the alchemists -"

"I do not believe so," murmured Gabriel, "although I grow less certain by the moment." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. "_Nobody move._"

The movement, to his shock, continued. Vimes was lighting another cigar.

"Mad, brain not like real brain, I see your bloody oatmeal too," the man offered wearily, by way of explanation. And, yes, behind him, the unaffected Carrot was standing very still. Vetinari, on the other hand, was perfectly mobile and was in fact looking speculatively at his cane.

The two undead, of course, were unaffected.

"Very well," said Gabriel, and muttered something fast and angular sounding. _That_at least stopped them from walking around and also from attacking him (not that they would have had success at that endeavor in any case). All this magic wasn't helping his mood, though.

"Fix this," he said urgently as soon as the spell was done.

She frowned thoughtfully at some inner vision. "Give the potion to the sergeant," she said finally. "Watch her kill the rest and then feed on her, it'll be almost as good, she'll be so bloated with blood by then."

Angua jerked within the complex bonds of the spell.

Gabriel smiled.

"As always, you have the perfect solution, my love," he said, and drew aside his wings in order to have better access to the flask. He removed it from its place, flashed her another, toothy smile and opened it under the werewolf's nose.

Then everything went a little bit quickly for the mental health of, well, anyone, even mad wizard vampires.

Angua's face Changed. This time, though, there was no terror, only the serene and absolute ruthlessness of a real predator. It was neither lupine nor human nor even that of a dog; it was the face of a true lycanthrope on the fine line _between_ that it was born to walk.

He had intended for her to attack Humpeding first, and, indeed, when she broke her bonds she lunged for the short, slim constable.

But then Sally moved in a way that was impossibly - or rather inhumanly - fast, and was half behind the pouncing werewolf, although her feet were in the same place. She threw Angua back, and Angua half turned, so that the first thing to hit her impeccable olfactory organ was the marginally stronger scent of von Dhampyr.

Vampires and werewolves may have a lot in common, but as everyone knows, sometimes the important thing is the simplest one. _Werewolves really hate vampires. _They really, really do.

Gabriel and Angua went down, fighting tooth and claw, which meant exactly what it sounded like.

Louisa, who had been considering things, screamed and swooned.

And Sally, who had also been considering things, and had a... hunch, glanced at Vimes.

He looked at her, nodded, and took from his side the axe he had been carrying all along. It gleamed.

He tossed it to her, and she caught it with one hand, and winced in surprise as the skin of her palm started to burn. Then she raised the weapon.

Gabriel saw her, obviously, but he merely laughed. "_You _certainly can't hurt me," he gasped, as he and Angua wrestled for their control, "you silly girl. Don't you realize I have magical protect-"

The axe came down. There was a soft, unreal noise, the sound, perhaps, of thaums splitting apart under the incoming blade.

There was a grisly, very real noise. The vampire's head, still laughing, toppled to the floor. The werewolf, triumphant, started to worry the still moving white form -

There was a flash of light, which was, to the eyes of the unmagical beings in the room, more appropriately described as a flash of dark. The octarine went straight through them.

Then the magic was gone, and outside, the clouds broke and the sun shone through. All that was left of the wizard vampire was a pile of ashes on the floor. Angua was out cold, and looked human.

Sally was screaming.

Eventually, she subsided, and all that was left was the heavy, heavy silence.  
**  
(a) It's shorter in Omnian. Really. Don't believe me? Look it up. The word is 'Nhoj.' Not easier to pronounce, no, but shorter!**

**(b) Which was difficult, because as of December 27th, the Year of the Half-Digested Kipper, there had been 82,943 schisms within the Omnian Church, but Visit was a man with an open mind and it was so _very _open it could fit 82,943 different interpretations and still have room for a few cunning arguments, although that was his friend Smite(c)'s area, mostly.**

**(c) Smite-The-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments. Or, in Omnian, Enitsugua.**

**(d)They were some of the strangest stairs in the history of architecture, not counting the work of B.S. Johnson, obviously. They went up, and then down. They had no apparent purpose except possibly to give Vimes a reason to say "And he'll make _sure _you don't fall down the stairs on the way to the cells. Right, Detritus?" Not that having no stairs had ever stopped him from saying that, but now complaints that there were no bloody stairs were effectively nullified, and his paperwork was cut down by 50. It was a win-win situation(e).**

**(e) Except for the people who were threatened, I mean promised, that they would not fall down the stairs, but you can't have everything.**


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Chapter Fourteen**

_In which the loose ends are, theoretically, snipped, tied, ripped out, or, at worst, merely shoved in the corner__ so that the guests won't see them  
_

Typically, the Patrician was the one who broke the silence.

He prodded the ashes delicately with his cane, glanced out the window at the proper, wintry fog that was pouring down the streets at unusually high speeds, and said

"Psychotropics in the city? I suppose it must have been the excess power he was injecting into our already abnormally high thaumic field."

Almost as soon as the man began to speak, there was a subtle change in the air. Vimes, who had been as tense as a very tense thing, felt his muscles relax so suddenly it was painful. More importantly for him, however, Vimes felt the pink haze of inebriation start filtering through his brain. His thoughts were slowing down to a pace that was practically coherent, give or take a few drinks.

He frowned. "What's happening?"

"I believe," said Vetinari, "that without the, ah, active ingredient of Dhampyr's magic the potion is no longer in effect." Something seemed to occur to him. A look that was almost recognizable as worry passed over his face, and he excused himself, rather hastily, and slipped out into the hallway.

"Good to know," said Vimes, to no one in particular.

Then he saw Louisa.

She was getting up slowly on trembling legs, and staring around the room. There was something dark and furious in her wide, milky blue eyes.

"You," she said, almost inaudibly. She was staring at the ashes. "_You_. I could have had the power - the city at my feet," her voice was climbing in volume, inexorably, "and then the world! - but for_you _and your games. Hunger! You know nothing of hunger! You were just a petty thief, a parasite living on the edges of things, but I, I COULD HAVE BEEN -" she screamed, and then whirled around to face Vimes, who was holding handcuffs he'd grabbed off Carrot in one hand and about to hit her over the head with a truncheon held in the other. "Don't come any nearer! I've got a stake!"

She did indeed have a stake. He came nearer anyway, however, because what she did _not_have were the necessary reflexes to kill a practiced Watchman before he could finish bringing the big stick down on her head.

She crumpled to the ground with a little "oh" of pain. Vimes rapped her fingers once. They uncurled. He picked up the stake, hooked it to his belt in case they had another sudden attack of the mad vampire wizards, and handcuffed the girl.

Well, that was that.

During this little drama, in a way consistent with Vetinari's inference, Angua had opened clear and lucid eyes and was trying to get up. Carrot hurriedly went over to her side - and, yes, the magic there was gone too. So Vimes decided they could all probably take care of themselves for a moment, and went instead to carefully pry the axe out of Sally's clenched fist. There was a black, sooty mark where the handle had been, contrasting sharply with her pale palm, and a faint scent of burning meat hung around her.

"Sorry about that, Constable. And... thank you," he said, quietly.

"What _was _that? I - I've never - it bit me!"

"I kind of gathered. Uh. Look, cutting the head off isn't enough for vampires, right? You need, like, a holy symbol as well, or garlic, or some such."

She gave a nervous look. "Am I well-advised to be telling you this? Be honest."

He paused, looked thoughtful for a moment, and then, abruptly, started to laugh. She blinked at him. Eventually, he subsided, caught her expression, and put his head in his hands.

"Excuse me, Sally, I think I'm a bit overwrought, haha. It's fine, I'm not going to kill you. Not at this very moment, anyway. All right?"

"Just checking," she said, looking relieved. "Yes. That is, yes, you need something else fatal as well as the axe. That's why I don't understand -"

Vimes held up a hand and went rummaging through his pockets for a few minutes. "Here it is," he said finally, holding up a rather battered pamphlet. "Under the recent amendment made by the Really Quite Amazingly Revered Oats, er, the axe is considered a holy symbol of Om."

Sally looked genuinely shocked. "You _kept _one of the _pamphlets_?"

"I grabbed it on my way out of here, actually. Give me a break, I was mad at the time."

"Obviously," she said, smirking, though she added prudently "...sir. Are you still?"

"What? Oh. No. Probably not, anyway. No madder than the next man."

"The next man's Carrot, sir."

"Damn."

"I guess that's as good as it'll get for us, Mister Vimes." She hesitated and stared at her open palm. Eventually, she said, without meeting his eyes,

"Couldn't you at least have given me warning?"

"No," he said frankly. "Not really. What, should I have shouted "Hey, Sally, heads up, I'm going to toss you an axe so that you can cut Dhampyr's head off because you're the only person who could possibly resist his bloody magic enough to do so but look out, it's a holy symbol I'm throwing at you!" and hoped the bastard would ignore it?"

"Well, it would have been helpful."

"For you, maybe. _You're_ undead."

"So was he," she said, soberly.

"That he was."

"Can you give me a hand, sir?" said Carrot, breaking into their twin reveries. "She isn't feeling very well."

"Understatement," Vimes muttered and went over to help the Captain. Sally stood perfectly still, watching the curiously mundane scene from one side.

Was that it, then? The end of the show?

The door opened, and Lady Sybil entered. "Samuel Vimes," she said, regally, "_hwhat_ is the meaning of this?"

Or not, thought Sally, grinning.

Vimes looked suddenly shifty. "Er," he said.

"You barge in, after a day of being supposedly insensible and mad, I might add, and instead of going up to say so much as hello like a decent person, you dash into the Shockingly Disquieting Yellow drawing room, grab the axe that the Low King gave to you, and disappear!" she continued, ignoring the fact that everyone in the room was staring at her. "Really, Sam, I want an explanation and I want it now."

"I had to solve a tricky case, dear," said Vimes helplessly, dismissing with a gesture the ashes lying on the floor and the unconscious woman and so forth as 'a tricky case'.

"Hmm," said Sybil as she took in the scene. "Well. It's all fixed up now, is it?"

"Not really, there's paperwork and Lady Louisa to deal with -"

"I'm sure Carrot can handle it. You are coming home. Now," she added, firmly, and steered him out of the cell by the shoulders. His vague protests echoed through the hall for some time.

Angua made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a strangled laugh. Sally didn't bother to hide it. Carrot looked disapprovingly at them, and then went and got a jar**(a)** to gather up the ashes with.

**(a) For which purpose he did _not _stop by Igor's cell, despite the plentitude of glassware that could be found there. No, to get a jar he went up the stairs, down the stairs, out of the Yard, crossed the street, made a left turn, and ended up several streets away at Millicent's Boringg Galss Thyngs, because at least they wouldn't suddenly turn into cucumbers, as Igor's were wont to do.**

---

Madam was waiting patiently when Havelock came to open the cell door, and she had had some time to think.

"You could have just _told _me, you know," she said.

"I was not positive as to whether my inference was correct," said Vetinari, calmly. "And if I had been wrong who knows how much time you would have spent investigating the matter? Besides it would have been a waste of such talent as Louisa has if you squelched it on the basis of an unfounded supposition."

"And sending me on a wild goose chase was helpful because..."

"Not a wild goose chase," he corrected her. "No doubt if you ask Vimes in private he'll be more revealing. Or, then again, possibly not."

She raised an eyebrow. Something like a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, but within a fraction of a second he was all business. "And if I had left you to simply enjoy your trip, who knows what you would have found?"

"It would have saved you time and effort if I had discovered her little scheme."

"Possibly. It might also have led to your quick and violent murder by the vampire, the prospect of which I must admit I find distasteful."

"But I met him anyway," Madam pointed out.

"When Louisa was lulled into a sense of security about the possibility of any threat you might provide, yes."

She sighed. "I begin to remember why I moved to Pseudopolis in the first place."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"This from a man who once tried to convince me to allow myself to become dragon-bait?"

"As I recall you were already living in Pseudopolis at the time, Madam."

She gave him a dry look. "Quite so. And entertaining as this visit has been, I believe I will be returning there soon."

"Of course. _Will_ you be calling on Vimes? I should probably warn Lady Sybil, if so." He looked less than pleased at the idea.

"No, I don't believe so," said Madam, thoughtfully. "It's enough to have my suspicions."

"Ah? Then do stop by before you leave. A game of Thud, perhaps?"

"Certainly not. You've been practicing against that charming Lady Margolotta, have you not? Whereas..."

"...you haven't played for years? Come now, Madam. For old times' sake?"

"When on the Disc did we play Thud together?"

"We never did," he admitted. "You did like to trounce me at chess, though, which was unfair considering that you are almost two decades older than me."

"I was merely enjoying winning against you while I had the opportunity, Havelock. And I will be there," said Madam, smiling.

Then aunt and nephew went their separate ways, and Madam, for old times' sake, did not mention that she played Thud every day in Pseudopolis against Mr. Slant of Ankh-Morpork and incidentally used it as an opportunity to practice her ciphering skills. The way she saw it, he probably already knew, and if he did not - well, we live and we learn.

---

It was arranged for Louisa to be sent to a heavy duty Asylum for Lost Souls, because Vimes had a vindictive streak, and, well, she _was _obviously mad. Talking about becoming Patrician? Mad wizard vampires? Who would believe that sort of thing? And in the meantime, Sally and Angua speculated that she had genuinely been in love with Dhampyr. Their superior officers studiously tried not to think about it and also to block out the giggles.

The alchemists who had been involved were rounded up later that afternoon, and came quietly enough, and the coachman was recovered enough to be brought to the Yard as well. From the little group, the Watchmen learned the facts, which were as follows:

The solution was inflammable, so in all probability Vimes' lit cigar was to blame for his current state of desk-less-ness. (Vimes looked pointedly blank at this.)

The whole mysterious business with the coach could be explained by the simple fact that the coachman had _heard_ someone get in, and that in all likelihood it had been Dhampyr.

Louisa had never gotten into the coach at all, because she had been aware that Vetinari was suspicious about the Pseudopolis party already and preferred to, instead of trying to alleviate the suspicion, which she knew rarely worked, transfer it to Jamie by way of an extremely mysterious mystery.

According to the alchemists, she seemed just a little bit panicked as she did so, and Dhampyr had not been pleased with her at the time. They (and she) could tell by the way he ran a single claw down the back of her neck occasionally.

When they had gathered all the information from the suspects that seemed likely to be forthcoming, Commander Vimes told Carrot to let them stay in the cells for the night and then send them home, as it was a clear case of Coercion. Or something.

Since the case was closed, he also felt no qualms about handing the jar of ashes over to Vetinari upon request. This may or may not have been unwise, all things considered. Afterwards, though, everything was back to what passed for normal, in the Watch.

No. Wait.

When Angua found Cheery rummaging frantically through her closet, searching for a dress, _then_ everything was back to normal in the Watch.

---

"...a dark and stormy night..." said a cool, precise voice, in dark and echoing passages in the heart of the Palace. There was a pause, an intake of breath, and a thud as might be made by someone jumping.

Vetinari, you see, had other things to be worried about besides the wrath of his Aunt.

In one hand, he was carrying a sphere full of viscous fluid.

He arrived at Leonard's door and opened it, cautiously. His caution was justified when a burnt piece of dwarf bread came flying by and almost decapitated him.

"Perhaps a less tightly-coiled spring?" said a familiar voice. "Oh, hello, my lord, do come in."

The Patrician did so. "Something new?" he said, weakly.

"An adaptation of an older design," said Leonard of Quirm. "What is the problem?"

"You recall the potion I had you make, as a theoretical exercise?"

"Certainly, my lord."

"And you were sure it worked and included what I had specified?"

"Yes."

"Did you add magic?"

Leonard looked puzzled. "Well, obviously, my lord, it was necessary for certain unreal parameters -"

"Quite. Yes. I see. Now tell me, Leonard," said Lord Vetinari, "_do you have a way to get rid of it?"_

"Um."

"Quite," Vetinari said again. There was an awkward silence, then he said:

"How long would it take you to get to the Edge?"

"Perhaps a week, my lord? If I were to use the smaller Kite I have designed, I'm sure I could make it in a week."

"Have you tested the new Kite, Leonard?"

"Why, yes, I have! Just last week."

"...And?"

"And, er, it was entirely successful except for a few small problems -"

"I think in this case we will sacrifice speed for practicality. Take a ship," said Lord Vetinari, and for once Leonard knew better**(a)** than to argue.

So it was that he found himself, a month later, admiring the sight of a uncomfortably close horizon. He had learned many new things on his voyage, some of them involving the exotic and fascinating species of finches that had sprung up in the famous carnivorous forests of lower Klatch, but now it was time to do what he had come to do.

It was a complicated task, one that required a steady yet gentle hand. It involved a swamp dragon, and a harness, and other exciting things. The end result was something like a cross between a Hubland dog sled and a token pear tree.

In its claws, reinforced by complicated leather strapping, the dragon carried a jar of a thick, sludgy mixture formed by mixing an already viscous liquid with a substantial amount of ash. Leonard hadn't asked. It would be gone soon, lost in the depths of space, and then he could go back to writing his new (and already rather thick) book, _How Simple Animals Grow Appendages Through Mutation and Become Complicated Animals Like Us. _Finches, he thought, that was the thing.

**(a) In all likelihood, that is, he knew better than to argue. It is also possible that he was merely distracted by the pattern of candlelight on his Puzzle For Entertaining Intelligent and Mildly Obsessive People By Way Of Complex Mechanisms And Colored Cubes That Can Be Rotated, which he could already solve in 17 seconds and was quickly becoming something of a hobby(b).**

**(b) Not that Leonard of Quirm ever took up a hobby for more than, oh, six to seven hours, but all the same. It was a nice little game, if he did say so himself.**


	15. Something Akin To An Epilogue

**Something Akin To An Epilogue**

_In which nothing more need really be said about anything, ever_

In the dark depths (or heights, depending on your point of view) of space, where the stars lie scattered and brilliant across the black expanse of the eternal night like the prized pin collection of one insignificant Stanley, black velvet rolls unwrapped, someone spoke.

YOUR MOVE, MISTER DHAMPYR.

There was a sound of clattering dice. "Thirteen," said a transparent figure, visible, it seemed, only where starlight reflected off a not-surface. "Again." There was a small clicking noise as his fingers set something indistinct down on The Board.

He drew his hand away, and the shape of his piece was revealed. Death observed the little silver bowler hat for a while, and looked at the tall, ominous looking ghost of a mad wizard vampire, who was sitting - if sitting is the right word - it isn't - across from him.

I AM AFRAID, said the seven foot tall, skeletal anthromorphic personification wrapped in fabric woven from Darkness with a capital D that represented the Last Gate, THAT YOU HAVE LANDED ON MY HOTEL, AT THE BOARDWALK. THAT WILL BE $400, PLEASE.

In the dark depths of space, where the stars lie scattered and brilliant across the black expanse of eternal light...

There was and will be the faint, impossible sound of someone swearing, and the louder, even more impossible sound of bony fingers throwing dice.

Forever. Which is really just as it should be.

**THE END**

A/N:

Bwahahahaah!!! Hahaha!!!!! MwahahAHAHA**HAHA!!!!!!! **&c.

Yrs. Sincerely,

The Author

P.S. Time to test your Discly knowledge (again)! Does anyone reading this know why Jamie is not, technically speaking, an entirely original character?

P.P.S Formatting is fixed. Or, at least, I tried. If it's messed up now, it's messed up forever, okay?


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